


By Fate Alone

by DrGraves



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst with a Happy Ending, Demons, Fate, Friendship, Gen, Magical Realism, No Slash, Resurrection, Van Days, character death but they walk it off so i didn't tag it, enough angst to shake a stick at, psychic-ish Gerard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2020-03-20 17:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18997045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrGraves/pseuds/DrGraves
Summary: ...ultimately, there was no answer until whatever was going to happen, did. The future was still an uncertain wasteland, and they were peering through time with a lens the size of a pinhole.Even though his brother has the uncanny ability to see forward in time, Mikey Way's future is still uncertain. After Gerard has a vision of Mikey's untimely death, the race is on to save Mikey from his fate. Fate, it seems, has her work cut out for her.[still updating, just slowly]





	1. Vision

**Author's Note:**

> To my muse, Rhianne:  
> Thank you for being a rad beta reader and convincing me to get off my ass and write this fic, even though you're scared of MCR. We'll be rich and famous someday, baby.

They had to be onstage in less than an hour, and Frank couldn’t find his fucking tie. 

Swear to God, the van was a nightmare. It was a miracle he even found his shoes and didn’t accidentally stick his hand in something moldy and foreign during the blind search under the seats. It was a gamble that hadn’t paid off well in the past, but apparently it was his lucky day, and nothing tried to take a bite of his fingers.

He strongly suspected it was the Class Four spirit that usually hung out near the radio who liked to hide his shoes. Gerard firmly doubted that, and insisted that Frank was just that bad at keeping track of his stuff. Mikey always pointedly put on his headphones when the argument surfaced again. The truth was that Frank was probably responsible for fifty percent of the mess in the van, but of course he’d never admit that. At least he showered enough. Unlike some people.

The hunt for his tie continued, and on his way combing the van from front to back he picked up a cheeseburger of indiscriminate age along with enough soda cans to make a suit of armor out of. He shoved them in the overflowing trash bag at his feet, feeling like a little bit of a saint as he smashed down the garbage to within an inch of its life.

“No one helps me around this house,” he said. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Ray said, fondly, skirting around Frank and tucking in his shirt. He bashed his elbow on the open sliding door of the van and cursed at it. 

“Toro,” Frank said, once Ray was done cursing in pain. “You seen my tie?”

“Red or pink?”

“Red, asshat.” That earned a smothered laugh from Mikey, who was half-hidden in the back row of seats. Frank could only see his foot propped up on the back window, but he assumed he was using every last gangly inch of him to take up as much seat as possible. 

See, Mikey was smart about this whole thing. He got ready at least an hour before everyone else did, while the van was still moving, to avoid the panicked scramble that happened before every gig. Despite the general lack of space to do so. While Gerard’s nose was in his sketchbook or an (illustrated) textbook about the living dead, and Ray and Frank were most likely getting their beauty sleep, Mikey was in his stage clothes and priming to gloat about how they were always late because it took Gerard a millennium and a half to do his makeup.

“Nope,” Ray said. “Check the front seat.”

Frank did, digging through the pile of their “luggage” all piled up next to the driver’s seat. Christ, they needed some fucking Febreeze or something in here. Alas, no tie.

He aimed a shout to the other side of the van, where through the window he could see the shadow of Gerard using the side view mirror to smear makeup around his eyes. “Gerard!”

“You've reached Gerard; leave a message after the beep.”

Frank sighed. 

“I haven't seen your tie,” he said, too fixed on his makeup to even look at Frank, and Frank made a “bah, humbug” face in his direction.

“Stop making that face,” Gerard said, and Frank swore at him as he went in search of his last resource. 

“Mikey-”

“Yes, dear?”

“Tie?”

Mikey sat up and tossed his Gameboy on the seat behind him. “I have no idea what you're talking about,” he said.

Frank looked at him, looked at his collar, which because he was a beanpole of a dude was at Frank's eyebrows, and saw that he was wearing two ties. One thin and striped, and the other distinctly wider and red.

“Mikey Way.”

“Frankie.” 

“Is that my tie?”

“Could be.”

Frank daintily adjusted his cuffs and said, “I'm going to murder you.”

***

Mikey remained alive, despite Frank's threats, although a vicious pillow fight quickly broken up by Ray resulted in a huge amount of food wrappers being thrown around.

“What am I, your fuckin’ mom?” Ray said, holding Frank by his shirt collar. Frank made kissy faces at him.

“You love me, Toro,” he said.

Ray smiled. “You little shit.”

Gerard flung open the van door and started digging around in the back seat despite Mikey’s protests, which meant he was either done with his makeup or had an idea. He usually busted around like he'd just figured out how to walk when he had a good one and couldn't wait to put it down in a sketchbook. Frank watched with fond curiosity, because stuff like this usually ended up with some kick-ass drawings that would get scattered around the van.

Something struck him as wrong a second later. 

Gerard was usually kind of a spaz when he had something in his head he needed to write down, but at the very least he finished his makeup before he went for his sketchbook. One eye was smudged with red so it looked like he’d gotten decked, but the other was free of color and looked small in comparison. His face had gone white, and he got one hand on his sketchbook before he grunted in pain and fell to the parking lot concrete on his knees, sending loose leaf paper scattering and clutching at his head. 

“Gee!” Mikey said. By some supernatural brother instinct he was the first one to be on the ground in front of him, holding his forearms with spindly fingers and prying them away from where they were twisting knots into his hair.

“What the fuck?” Ray and Frank were on the ground a second later, and Gerard hid his face in Mikey's shoulder. Mikey held him there with a hand on his neck.

It was like he was having a fit. More like a migraine. He didn't speak, but didn't push anyone away. As if any of them were going anywhere. His weakness didn’t last long, and after a few shaky breaths he carefully moved away from Mikey to sit on the floor of the van, exposed by the open door, legs flung out akimbo in front of him. 

He looked at Mikey, Ray, and Frank all in turn. To Frank he looked gaunt, but he could see him quickly drawing his features up, composing himself. “Sorry,” he said. 

“Don’t be sorry,” Ray said, in the way he did that sounded actually convincing. “Did you see something?”

“You could say that,” Gerard said. “It just surprised me, that’s all.”

 _Must have been pretty fuckin’ spooky,_ Frank thought. “It was a vision, right?” he asked. It couldn’t have been anything else, but he still needed the confirmation.

What the rest of them called “visions,” because the actual word was long as hell and derived from ancient Sumerian, had been happening long before Frank met Gerard as a seventeen-year-old kid in Toro’s basement. About two years ago, after Frank started getting suspicious there was something not quite right about Gerard, Mikey had told him in hushed tones that he’d never known a time where Gerard wasn’t periodically struck with visions of potential futures. It started with a headache, and then the nearest reflective surface would flash like a camera lens with a snapshot of potential time. Sometimes the future actually happened and sometimes it didn’t, but regardless, seeing it wasn’t exactly pleasant for Gerard.

He first heard the word "foreseer" from witch doctors. They gave him pills for the pain and the recovery; without them he was anxious and viable to cry blood at any given moment. Treating the symptoms, not the cause, as per usual. They were the same whether they dealt in the mundane or the supernatural. 

Frank found where Gerard kept his pills in the bag with his toothbrush and stuff. He tipped a capsule into Mikey’s palm as he returned to Gerard.

Gerard fixed his hair. “Yeah. Can I, uh...Can I tell you later?”

“Whatever you’re comfy with,” Ray said, a little too quickly. That meant he was freaked but doing a good job of hiding it. “After the show maybe?”

Gerard nodded, then tried a smile. It was genuine, but pained. “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry; it wasn’t anything horrible, just-” He waved a hand to indicate the general shitty-ness of how he felt whenever he saw into the future. 

Mikey gave him the pill, and he took it dry, too eager to ward off the side effects to worry about water. Frank offered him a hand to stand up, and Gerard’s fingers twitched before taking the help. He didn’t look Frank in the eye, and stooped to gather up the loose pages of paper that had gone flying. Something about that rubbed Frank the wrong way. He puzzled over it for a second before he decided he was being an idiot.

The back door to the venue opened, spitting out a familiar face, and he took the opportunity to stop hovering and go talk to Brian.

“Hey, Schechter,” he said.

“Hey,” Brian said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. “Showtime.”

“Can you give us five minutes?”

Brian immediately looked suspicious. “Why?”

Frank looked around, making sure there were no other people within earshot. He didn’t exactly want to make it public knowledge that Gerard Way, lead singer of “this rad upcoming band” was some kind of freak. Who knew what kind of assumptions people would make? Coexistence with the supernatural didn’t exactly mean freedom from stigma against those with inhuman abilities. It was bad enough for Gerard having to deal with his visions that labeled him as a Foreseer. Frank didn’t think he could take it if he had to see one of his best friends get ridiculed and called “hook” or “wick,” or any number of other slurs made to insult the witch-blooded.

“Gerard had another vision,” Frank said. “He didn’t tell us what it was, but he looked pretty freaked.”

“Shit,” Brian said. “Is he okay?”

Gerard stood up behind Frank, doing up his tie. “He’s fine,” he said, pointedly in the third person. “It wasn’t anything, Schechter.”

Brian didn’t look like he believed that, either. Of course, being their unofficial tour manager, he wasn’t inclined to believe anything anyone in the van said, because he was well-accustomed to their bullshit. He let it go, though.

“You ready?” he asked Gerard. Gerard hummed a yes.

***

Brian let them through the back door of the venue, saying something about how it used to be some kind of community theater joint. Meanwhile Frank was pressed uncomfortably between Mikey’s bony shoulder and a dirty hallway wall until they got backstage where there was more space. Frank’s watch said there was still a good fifteen minutes before they had to be out on stage, so he took his time helping Ray, Mikey, and Gerard unload the shit from the trailer. His guitar’s familiar weight slung over his shoulder, and he felt the first buzz of excitement he always got before a show.  
He ran over the setlist with Mikey and tuned with Ray. All the while, Gerard would give him weird little glances while he was running through his standard series of vocal warm ups. Frank ignored him, even though he was being weirder than usual. He played a few scales to get his fingers warmed up, and at t-minus three minutes he swung his arms around, spun in a circle, cracked his neck and got ready to throw himself into the music. 

Gerard, Ray, and Mikey did the same. It wasn’t like they were putting on a new personality for the show, more like taking what was already there and cranking it up to eleven. For Ray that just meant he commanded lead guitar with pure talent. Mikey and his whole “cool motherfucker” vibe put a swagger in long limbs that otherwise gangled. Gerard loosened up and threw his normal reservations to the wind, ready to go apeshit with his terrible dancing. He let whatever was bothering him roll off his shoulders–not gone, but postponed in the name of a good gig.  
Then the previous band was done and they were on. 

The lights were low and as soon as he stepped onstage, Frank forgot about Gerard’s vision and his weird looks. It was just the music, held in the air as potential energy. Writhing crowd and Ray’s guitar firing up through the amps like a machine. 

***

The show was wild and perfect in the way that left Frank feeling like he’d just hooked up jumper cables to his ears and fried his brain circuitry. He had the sense not to fling himself on the floor once they finished their last song, but he was sorely tempted to. Concern for the safety of his limbs and guitar won out, though.

The cheers followed them backstage, and mutely they packed up after the round of high-fives. Coming down from the adrenaline surge and letting the real world rush back in made Frank a tiny bit grateful that they had a few days before their last gig. They’d even convinced Brian to book them a motel tonight. That meant a break from the van and complimentary shitty coffee. Probably a Waffle House, too. Fuckin’ paradise.

Back in the van, Frank immediately kicked off his shoes and Ray kicked them under his seat to spite him. What he really wanted to do was eat – a good, greasy 24-hour breakfast joint was looking more and more appealing – but Mikey was sitting in the back practically oozing “team meeting” from his pores. Clearly nothing was going to get between him and getting Gerard to fess up. 

Frank was curious, too. The only thing keeping him from pestering Gerard, prodding him in the neck and generally being a shit, was that Gerard was definitely avoiding him. He’d been throwing Frank these shifty little glances as they loaded up the trailer, and avoiding talking to him whenever possible, responding to Frank’s questions with one word answers. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, but stuff like this had happened in the past. Maybe he’d buy him a coffee – extra black, touch of sugar – from that joint he really liked. That always seemed to absolve most of whatever shit they managed to start. 

Frank took his usual spot, throwing his legs over Mikey's lap in an attempt to get him to fucking relax a little. It didn’t really work, but Mikey poked his leg a bit, which he supposed was better than nothing.

The last one to sit down was Ray, plastic water bottle in hand, carefully plastered diplomatic look on his face. There was an awkward moment where everyone looked at Gerard, and he folded his jacket tightly around himself.

“I feel like you’re staging an intervention,” he said, obviously uncomfortable.

“We just wanna know what you saw,” Frank said. “It’s not like it can be that bad, right?” He nudged Gerard’s knee, but backed off when Gerard didn’t smile. Then suddenly Frank was the out-of-place perky one, and he put his feet on the floor rather than by Mikey’s jeans.

“It’s never been this bad before,” Gerard started. “I mean, sometimes the things I see are a little fucked up, but this was...on a whole new level.”

Nobody interrupted him, and he let go of his jacket to tug at his hair instead. For the first time that night, he made eye contact with Frank. It felt like his gaze was boring holes in Frank’s corneas, probing his brain and searching for information. “It was you.”

Now Frank was the one everyone was looking at, so that was just super. “What about me?”

Gerard swallowed. “I saw you kill Mikey.”


	2. Distrust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by the terrific Rhianne

“What?”

Gerard shrugged jerkily. “That’s just what I saw.”

“Me,” Frank said. “Killing Mikey. My best friend, Mikey.”

Mikey looked like he didn’t know what to feel. Frank was tempted to nudge him a little bit, but he felt like Mikey might shatter if he did, so he kept his hands to himself. 

“Yeah,” Gerard said. “It was bad.”

“How bad?” Ray asked. 

Gerard stuttered, twisting his hands in his hair. “Ah, I didn’t see his...your face, Frank. But you stabbed Mikey in the neck and there was, fuck, there was a lot of blood.”

“Shit.” Ray rubbed a hand over his mouth. 

“That still doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen,” Frank said, although he suddenly felt like his hands were dirty, like he needed to scrub off his skin. “Like that time with the centipedes.”

Gerard shivered. “Not a good time to bring that up, but I guess you have a point.”

“But…” Ray started. “This Mikey thing–it seems like a nightmare, not a vision.”

“Explain?” Mikey said. 

“The only one here more scared of blood and needles than Frank is Gee. I just can’t see you elbow deep in Mikey’s blood. Hell, you’re a pacifist.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Gerard said. “That’s why it was so weird.”

“And that doesn’t mean you’re less inclined to believe it?” Ray said. 

“I don’t know,” Gerard said. “We started this whole band because I had a fuckin’ vision. Sometimes they do happen.”

Mikey was quiet. Understandably, since they were talking about the likelihood of his death. He looked like he was either about to puke or fall over, or maybe both. Frank wanted to reach out and offer comfort, but it probably wouldn’t be well-received if he made any sudden movements in Mikey’s direction. Instead, he twisted his hands in his lap.

“So what do we do?” Ray asked. “Just business as usual?”

“We were back in Jersey,” Gerard added. He was looking at the inside of his own head, trying to remember every detail. “Like a mile out from the graveyard.” 

“How do you know?” Mikey asked, quietly.

“It was under the bridge on Inkwell Creek. Frank started to roll the body in the river and I flipped my shit.” He carefully avoided saying “Mikey's body,” Frank noticed. Not that he blamed him at all.

“So I’ll say it again; what do we do?” Ray said. 

“Well, we’re not even in Jersey,” Frank said. “So we’re safe for the time being.”

“Safe from you, you mean,” Mikey said. The fact that he sounded scared and small didn’t make the words hurt any less. A kick in the teeth and one in the gut for good measure. He felt indignation rise up like blood from a wound. Suddenly there were eyes on him and everyone sitting around him made the dangerous shift from “ally” to “accuser.” If they could just fucking understand that he’d never _do_ something like that to Mikey...

“I guess,” Frank said, feeling bland, spoiled. Alone. There was a moment when he drew in on himself, effectively separating from the rest of the group. If they were going to do that to him, fine. Look at him like high explosives–keep away from the blast site, don’t fucking touch it with a ten foot pole.

“We're not gonna be in Jersey for another few days,” Ray said, ever the rational one. “Might as well not worry much about it until we get on the road again.”

“Easier said than done,” Mikey said, with a rueful grin.

Frank turned his back and stayed silent for the rest of the drive.

***

Ray, Mikey, and Gerard talked into the night, filling in the holes for Brian as he drove. Brian stayed mostly silent, absorbing the information. Even when the van started rolling down the desolate highway and into the next town and the clock in the radio fritzed as it hit 3 AM. Gerard broke out his books—the ones from his semester in a college that wasn't art school. Normally he flipped through until he found a diagram he wanted to copy for practice, but now he skimmed the words of the veritable tome in his lap.

Mikey, on the other hand, was unconscious, sleeping like the dead. He was slumped against Gerard, who was the only one here—except maybe Ray because he was too nice—that wouldn't complain about Mikey drooling on him. They let him be, because God knew he wouldn't be able to sleep alone for the next week.

Meanwhile, Frank tried his hardest not to look visibly seething.

Gerard had offered him a book out of some hollow gesture of solidarity, and Frank flipped through it gamely before giving up. The searching was just a way to pass the time. He wasn’t going to find the answer to whatever this was in a Hell History 101 book. 

***

It was nearing dawn when Brian stopped the van in some town Frank forgot the name of. All he really cared about was a motel and a shower, and the fact that said motel was within ten miles of the Jersey state lines. Gerard had dozed off propped up against Mikey, and jolted awake when the van and trailer rolled over a speed bump. He looked around like he was rebooting, taking in his scattered textbooks and Mikey still dead to the world. 

“I need coffee,” he said. 

***

Brian was too tired to scold Frank or Ray for not sleeping on the drive. He unceremoniously tossed one of the room keys to Ray and disappeared into his room with the instruction of “Wake me up at noon,” after parking the van. He got distant like that when he was aching to go home after living like “animals” on the road.

Frank dug his stuff out of the van, which was just a duffle bag with a change of clothes and his toothbrush in it. He leaned through the door and shook Mikey by the foot to wake him up. Mikey did a whole-body flinch when he saw that it was Frank who was grabbing him. His stomach turned with a mix of shame and anger that came out as a mumbled “Sorry,” and he retreated. 

Mikey looked frail. Like he’d aged in the six hours he’d been asleep. Circles were stamped heavy under his eyes, and his glasses were even more in danger of slipping off the end of his nose than usual. Quietly he scooped up his bag and followed Gerard into the room they would share, as usual. He was a perfect picture of flighty – a twitchy, hollow-boned bird glancing over his shoulder. Frank could snap him like a wishbone.

It was an unsettling thought, and for a moment he was glad Mikey was in the next room, rather than nearer. As Frank went through the mechanical motion of taking a shower while Ray slept, he realized that this was eating at him. He didn’t trust himself anymore. It made him want to collapse in on himself and just check out until whatever this was blew over. He lost count of how many times he scrubbed over his hands with the hotel bar soap. 

He must have taken a while, because he heard muffled voices outside as he was brushing his teeth. Ray and Gerard, talking quietly outside the door. It didn't count as eavesdropping if Frank just happened to hear, and if he also just happened to press his ear against the door, well, no one could see him anyway.

“-in the shower. He didn’t sleep.”

Gerard’s response was too soft for Frank to make out.

“No, it’s getting to him,” Ray said. “He’s worried if he can’t trust himself anymore. I’m surprised he hasn’t left yet, honestly.”

“I’m not sure I trust him either.” Gerard’s quiet admission sliced into him, even though he knew he wouldn’t be any better in his situation.

“You don’t mean that,” Ray said.

“He’s my brother, Toro.” Frank flinched at Gerard’s shout, and cursed himself. God, this was going to eat him alive. 

“I know he’s your brother, and I love Mikey, too. I just can’t see Frank committing _murder_. Come on, Gerard. You know these things don’t always happen.”

“They happen enough,” Gerard said, like he was sick with it. 

“You’re wrong about him,” Ray said.

Frank opened the door, and their heads turned to him. Ray was leaning against the wall, and Gerard was propping his foot in the door to the hallway to hold it open. Neither of them looked better than dead on their feet. Gerard’s makeup was smudged beyond belief, making it look like his eyes were sunken. 

“Gerard’s right,” Frank said. Ray raised his eyebrows. “I can’t trust myself.”

Gerard had the decency not to break out an “I told you so.” 

“But you’re not-” Ray waved an arm. “You’re not having any homicidal urges. Are you?” 

“No,” Frank said.

“There you go,” Ray said, as if that was irrefutable evidence.

Gerard looked like he wished he could have the faith Ray did. But he would go to the ends of the earth to protect Mikey. If he could just get it through Gerard’s thick skull that he could never do something like that to Mikey. “What if it's not me?” 

Gerard looked at him quizzically. 

“What if you saw something-” He snapped his fingers. “-inhabiting my body? Using it against my will.”

Ray’s eyes widened microscopically, but Frank saw him school his features into suspicion. “Nothing around here has that kind of power.”

“I don’t know,” Frank said. “That’s the only scenario I can think of. Something bad hitches a ride in my body and…” he flailed a hand that was meant to indicate Gerard’s vision. “A Class One spirit or something.” He didn’t voice the other possibility clattering around in his head because it would surely be met with nothing but skepticism.

“There hasn’t been a Class One around here for over ten years,” Ray said.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Frank said. He crossed his arms. 

“Yeah, but it’s unlikely,” Gerard said. “And if that happened, or, uh, is going to happen, wouldn’t there be reports? Class Ones can’t exactly operate under the radar.”

He had a point. Frank shoved his damp hair out of his eyes, turning over as many possibilities as he could in his head. It was useless, because ultimately, there was no answer until whatever was going to happen, did. The future was still an uncertain wasteland, and they were peering through time with a lens the size of a pinhole. And his friends didn’t trust him not to rip every nonviolent bone out of his body and kill Mikey in cold blood. It was fucking ridiculous. If this was a movie they’d team up and talk to an underground witch or something to find a way to stop whatever was going to happen. As it was, it felt like they were fractured, barely able to trust Frank anymore. Hell, Gerard couldn’t even look him in the eye.

“How’s Mikey?” Frank said.

“Sleeping,” Gerard said. He scrubbed at the makeup around his eyes with his finger, smearing it more without actually removing anything. “He’s freaked the hell out.”

Anger boiled in Frank’s gut where he knew there should be sympathy. He felt like that was directed at him. Distrust whittled into a blade. Transparent like glass so even Ray couldn’t see its cut.

“I don’t blame him,” Frank grit out. This was a shitshow. A stupid fucking shitshow and he wanted out before he said something he'd regret. “I'm going out,” he said, not thinking about how bad an idea that was, only that he needed to be as far away from Mikey Way and his foreseer brother as he could.

“Keep the key, Toro. Let me back in,” he said, shoving past both him and Gerard.

“Frank-”

“I'm goin’ out,” he said, and the door slammed behind him and that was that.

He tried not to stalk past the people outside, but he had a feeling he looked like he was on the warpath. He didn't exactly blend in with the rest of the people at the hotel, and drew eyes as he went.

His only thought for a while was that he needed to be away. He needed to disappear and wait for the indignation and rage in his gut to stop biting at his friends like a wounded animal.

Outside, it was getting ready to rain. Perfect. Although Frank didn't care much if he ended up with a cold. He kept track of his directions somewhere in the back of his brain as his thoughts continued to spin. He'd hoped that going outside and breathing in air that didn't smell like thinly-veiled cigarette ash and lemon scented cleaner would clear his head. It brushed away the cobwebs, but this whole Mikey deal was a lot bigger than a fucking cobweb. 

He wanted to only be angry, but rage was serving as a poor disguise for a sick combination of fear and whatever was savagely fighting to stand his ground against his friends. Because he wouldn't, couldn't, do something like that to Mikey.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and took a left, and between one moment and the next the sky cracked open. He pulled the hood of his jacket up, cursing at nothing in particular. He must have looked kind of pathetic, he thought ruefully. Short guy made spindly by a few too many cigarettes and not enough good meals. Gray hoodie soaking through to chill him to the bone.

He let the cold leech away his fury until he was shivering and couldn't think about much of anything except how much he wanted a cup of coffee. He felt marginally ready to go back and keep himself in check while talking to Gerard and Ray, and Mikey if he was awake. Even though what Mikey said still grated at him: "Safe from you, you mean." He'd sounded sad, and Frank found himself wondering if he'd reacted the wrong way.

And then he had the strangest feeling. Like he was fifteen again and taking his first burning drag of a cigarette. An acrid burn that traveled down his throat and made him cough with how unexpected it was. He braced himself against a rough brick wall and hacked his lungs out – raw, choking coughs that made his eyes water. 

He swore once he could spare enough breath to do so. What the hell _was_ that? It was like battery acid in his lungs and stomach, and he had to fight to straighten up, only to double over again when his head seized with pain. Fuck, okay. This was bad. Really fucking bad. His first panicked thought was that it was an attack – something supernatural making a stab for him, only he couldn’t _think_ , couldn’t remember what to look for and had no idea how to fight it. 

Frank turned around, intent to lurch his way back to the hotel. Gerard or Ray or Mikey would know what to do. Yeah, they’d help him. They always did. He just needed to see through the rain and his swimming vision and get back. But, Jesus, he was tripping over his own feet and there was something wrong. There was something _so_ wrong.


	3. Sick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by the lovely Rhianne

Mikey dreamed of bloated insects and empty rooms. Fitting that he woke up in one. 

After sleeping in the van for the last week and a half, having a bed was good. Great, actually, but quickly spoiled by the fact that Gerard wasn’t in the adjacent one, or even in the room with him. He turned on the lamp and went through the motions of getting up and splashing water over his face to keep himself from panicking. 

Logically he knew Gerard was probably in the next room with Frank and Ray, but he was sick with himself at how dependent on his brother he felt.

He scratched his hands nervously through his hair and set his glasses on the tip of his nose, how he liked them. He wasn't so anxious to not appreciate the use of an actual bathroom. Then he went in search of Gerard.

He didn't have to go far. He knocked on the door of Frank and Ray's room, and Gerard opened the door. He'd changed out of his stage clothes and might have been wearing Ray's Iron Maiden tee shirt. None of them were really sure whose clothes were whose anymore.

"Hi," he said, like an idiot. He didn't like the way Gerard looked at him. Some complicated little twist of an expression between pity, fear, relief, and whatever else.

"Hi," Gerard said. He pulled him into the room and into a half-hug at the same time. "Feel okay?"

Mikey shrugged, and Gerard understood. Mikey looked around the room, at Ray flipping through the channel guide, and at a suspicious lack of Frank.

"Where's Frankie?" he asked. He sat beside Ray on the bed, looking over his shoulder at whatever secrets he was trying to divine from the booklet.

"Gone," Gerard said tersely, and Mikey raised an eyebrow.

" _Gone_ gone?" he said. Some emotion he couldn't identify twisted between his ribs. That could mean off the grid or back to Jersey, and Mikey wasn't sure which idea made him more nervous.

"No," Ray said, glancing at the window. "He got mad and got out of here...a few hours ago, actually. He didn't tell us where he was going."

"How long ago?" Mikey asked, even though Ray just answered that. He couldn't shake the feeling that it was somehow really bad that Frank was out by himself. Even though Gerard seemed to flip his trust for Frank off like a switch, no matter how much it hurt him, Mikey couldn't feel anything other than directionless fear. He couldn't—or wouldn't, he wasn't sure—put Frank's face on the actions of a killer. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be scared of dying.

"How come you're so quick to not trust Frank?" Mikey blurted. Gerard, if it was possible, stiffened further.

"You didn't see it," was all he said.

"Gee, we should look for him," Ray said. "It's been a while, and I don't like him being out alone."

"If it gets dark and he's not back, we can go look for him," Gerard said. He hadn't sat down, and Mikey didn't know if he wanted to slap him or hug him to get some sense in his head.

"What's your deal?" Ray said, and seemed to instantly regret it.

"My deal?" Gerard said. He didn't shout, keeping his temper on a tight leash, but his jaw was clenched so tight Mikey half worried if he was going to pry one of his fillings loose. "My deal is that it's entirely possible Frank could fucking kill Mikey, and soon. He... you're–" he flailed his hands, looking so lost and hurt. "–my brother."

This time Mikey did hug him. Gerard was shaking, and Mikey rested his cheek on the crown of his head. "Gee," he said, and Gerard took a shaky breath.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm just so scared. I don't want it to be Frank. I don't know what I'd do."

"I know," Mikey said. "Then let's find him and tell him that, idiot."

"Okay," said Gerard. “Okay.” And fucking relaxed for the first time in hours, letting Mikey go.

"Can I have a hug, too?" Ray said. Mikey laughed and punched him.

"We're finding Frank?" Ray asked, even though he'd heard Gerard and Mikey.

"Fucker's probably lost and caught a cold." Gerard huffed a small laugh, then jammed the heel of his hand under his nose to stop it as if it somehow wasn't okay to poke fun at each other like they usually did.

"A cold? Why?" Mikey said. Sure, Frank's immune system was fucked, but he could handle going outside.

As if on cue, rain started pattering against the window pane. "That," Ray said, pointing. "It rained earlier, too."

"Why did Frank even leave in the first place? Did you guys piss him off?" Mikey's question was directed at Gerard, because Ray was hell bent on defending Frank.

Gerard looked guilty. "He said he was coming back, but he's been on edge all day. He thought that maybe him...doing that to you...could be something inhabiting his body. A Class One or something-"

"They can take possession," Mikey pointed out, turning the possibility over in his head. He was fascinated by Class Ones, in the way some people were fascinated by serial killers. It was almost unbelievable for a human soul to charge up to that capacity, to conduct so much energy it could come back to the mortal plane and take a body again. 

"And I told him there would be signs and shit. Power outages." Gerard said. "And he got pissed and left."

"Do you know which way he went?" 

Ray shrugged. "He probably didn't go far. I just don't want to find him dead in an alley somewhere. I tried calling him but his phone's dead. Went straight to voicemail."

"Let's just go out and look," Mikey said. He couldn't have gone far. He wasn’t that stupid. Ever since he’d done the exact same thing and gotten jumped in Detroit for his trouble. He’d stay around the hotel, and they’d find him smoking on some corner and scaring the locals with his neck tattoos.

Ray checked that his room key was still in his pocket, and they all shrugged on their jackets to block out the October chill. They told Brian where they were going, and he waved an affirmative hand, continuing to talk on the phone in the snippy way he did when he was organizing something. Even Mikey could tell he was aching to get back to Jersey. He really hated being on the road, for a guy that was almost constantly on the road.

Outside, the rain had dissolved into a fine mist that still managed to soak you to the skin. Mikey wished he was Sherlock Holmes, or Gerard’s D&D character from when they were in high school, so he could look at footprints or a trail of cigarette ash and know exactly which way Frank had gone. As it was, he picked a sidewalk and followed it, tugging Gerard along.

The first block they walked around yielded no sign of Frank. Neither did the next, or the next. Ray had started humming Black Flag under his breath, one of the tells that he was starting to get nervous. And Mikey started to wonder if Frank was _gone_ gone. Had hitched a ride to who-knows-where with nothing but his phone and lighter. He wouldn’t do something like that, would he?

They rounded a corner, and Mikey almost mistook him for a homeless guy until Ray said, “Oh my _God_ ,” and dropped to his knees on the pavement. “Frankie.”

Mikey did a double-take, and holy shit, it was Frank. He’d almost tripped over his legs, seated as he was on the pavement, head lolling back against brickwork. He looked like shit, and he was unconscious. He would have looked dead if not for the flutter of a pulse in his neck, skin drenched with rain or cold sweat, Mikey couldn’t tell.

“Hey, Frankie,” Ray said, practically dripping concern. He grabbed Frank by the shoulders, and he didn’t stir except to make an unintelligible sound. “Frank, are you hurt?”

“‘M fine,” Frank said, not sounding fine at all. Mikey knelt, his worry finally getting the best of him. He hovered behind Ray’s shoulder and watched Frank try to pry his eyes open. Only one seemed to budge, and he fixed each of them with the clearest one-eyed look he could muster.

“Sorry, Gee,” he said, as if he’d been waiting for the right moment and not found it, so he just spit it out anyway. Gerard shared an unreadable look with him before Frank turned back to Ray and said, “Why am I on the ground?”

“You tell me, asshole,” Ray said, with a small laugh. “Can you stand?”

Frank looked dubiously at his own legs, which in any other situation would have been hilarious. He mutely held out his arms and let Ray pull him to his feet. For a second, he looked like he could manage on his own, then he swayed. He said “Toro,” and collapsed into Ray’s arms.

“Fucking hell,” Ray said. He shook Frank a little, in the way that you should probably never shake a person that might be injured, but he was out cold. Dead weight that would crumple if Ray let him go. He didn’t, and instead scooped an arm under his knees and picked him up. If Frank had any shred of consciousness left in him, he would have flirted mercilessly at Ray until Ray threatened to drop him in a gutter somewhere. As it was, Mikey practically ran as he led them back to the motel, stealing glances to make sure he was still breathing.

He beat on Brian’s door until he threw it open, saying, “I’m on the phone, you-” and then he paled at the sight of Frank, and pulled them into his room, snapping the door shut behind them.  
“Fuck, is he hurt?” he said, as Ray set his prone form down on the bed.

“He said he wasn’t,” Ray said, scrunching up his face. “I don’t believe him.”

Brian made an affirmative noise, pulling Frank’s hood down to get a good look at his face. Everyone hovered around him, and apparently it took Frank being comatose and lost for Gerard to let go of the hostility he harbored against him for something he hadn’t even done yet. That was a twist of morality and feeling Mikey didn’t want to touch, and he was perversely thankful for the linearity of “Keep Frank safe.”

Mikey realized that he was defending someone who could, in some indeterminable future, murder him. He chalked it up to the fucking absurdity of the world, and watched as Brian did something strange. He leaned down and placed his ear over Frank’s chest, as if trying to listen for a heartbeat. 

“What are you doing?” Gerard asked.

“Checking if he’s got shit in his lungs,” Brian said. Frank and pneumonia were old friends, and Mikey felt briefly stupid for not thinking of that sooner. Brian seemed not to hear anything out of the ordinary, and sat back with a crease to his brow. “He told you he wasn’t hurt?”

Ray nodded. “He woke up for a little bit. I got him to stand up, but he passed out.”

Mikey had a thought. “Gee,” he said. Gerard looked at him with tired, worried eyes. He didn’t miss the way his fingers twitched spasmodically for a cigarette. “Don’t you have that curse detector?” It was a possibility that Frank was cursed, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“Shit,” Gerard said, throwing a shifty glance at Brain. Even though logic said he was a friend, someone that could be further trusted with Gerard’s affinity to magic, that didn’t stop Gerard’s tendencies to guard his secrets like a magpie. To carefully fold away the things that shine. “Yeah. Hold on, I’ll get it.” Mikey flicked him the key to their room and he darted away.

“Gerard’s got a curse detector?” Brian asked.

Mikey winced. Gerard had a lot more magical paraphernalia than just that. Just because he was the only one out of the five of them that could actually use those kinds of things. He couldn’t manipulate his own magic, but he was sensitive to it all the same. It was the witch blood in him– one of the little genetic quirks that Mikey didn’t share with his brother. Like their different noses, but not nearly as inconsequential. 

All Mikey said was, “Yeah,” and didn’t offer further explanation. Brian didn’t push it. Sometimes Mikey hated it – whirled in a directionless anger at the world and how people like Gerard had to live. But it wasn’t like he could do anything about it, so he stood with Gerard as a quiet defender.

Gerard came back through the door with something that looked like a smooth, round stone in his hand. Like a river rock, colored a deep red. He pressed the object into Frank’s palm, his mouth a twist of concentration. “Nothing,” he said, and tucked the stone in his pocket. It would have glowed with a warning warmth in Gerard’s hand if Frank was suffering from any number of common curses. It was worse to know that whatever was happening was far from normal.

“Well, shit,” Ray said. Mikey agreed. 

***

Frank remained unconscious for the next few hours. None of them were too eager to leave Brain’s room for some fear that he’d wake up while they were gone, so they existed in limbo and watched the day die outside the window.

To Mikey, it felt like time thickened into a jelly. It was partially because of sleeping until the middle of the afternoon, and the fact that he just couldn’t seem to orient himself in the moment. He felt like he should be _feeling_ more. Fear for Frank’s safety, or his own. It just happened so fast it didn’t have the time to register beyond a general hum of anxiety.

Of course, these thoughts were invisible to everyone else in the room, except maybe Gerard. Growing up together meant they knew each other in the way only family could. All the others would see was him on the couch with Ray, chewing on a granola bar he was pretty sure hadn’t seen the light of day since last year. Watching as Brian periodically checked if Frank was coming down with something. Mikey couldn’t shake the feeling that it was something a lot more sinister than a virus.

He kept up a sluggish visual that never quite let Frank out of his line of sight, just lax enough that he had to look twice when Frank started moving.

And it was _wrong_. Nothing that could be mistaken for wakefulness. All the heads in the room turned as Frank's arms lifted as if being manipulated by strings driven through slack wrists. A corpse strung along by a puppeteer.

"Frankie?" Gerard said. His voice was a horrified whisper, but it might as well have been said to empty air. It was serpentine, the twist of muscle that threw his arms into a sacreligious cross, hands flexing like claws.

Mikey had heard the term “abject horror,” and he was pretty fucking sure that’s what this was. Fear in totality that gripped him like Frank’s clenched fists, a slow creep that he couldn’t look away from. Frank’s head lolled on a rubber neck, but his eyelids didn’t so much as flutter as he sat up, using a grotesque twist of his arm as a crutch, oblivious to the crush of fingers and sideways bend of the wrist. His chin hung at his sternum, and his feet flexed in his old shoes. A curling mess of elbows and knees and jutting shoulders, crack of joints stretched too far and head hanging. Hanging. Like the humanity had been drawn out of him with a hypodermic needle. 

It was like Mikey was looking forward in time, but not like Gerard did. These were two images transposed over the other: the first, the reality that Frank’s body was moving like it had just figured out it could, and the second, a forward-image woven from fear of that body thrashing towards him on twisted nerves. Whatever Frank’s frame was doing screamed danger from every sharp angle and bend of cartilage. Mikey could choke on the fear. And yet he couldn’t _look away_. It was a tug like a fishhook in soft tissue, and only when a retch of a cough caught in Frank’s throat was the spell broken.

Gerard swore, and suddenly the room was a flurry of motion when previously breath barely stirred the air. Mikey tripped as he realized he was standing, and worse, had crossed the room as if Frank was magnetized and pulling at the iron in his blood. He was too strung-out to care when he bashed his toe on the bed frame on his way around it. 

Frank collapsed again. He curled his tangle of limbs in a fetal position with his head hanging off the side of the bed as deep, hacking coughs gave way to retches. Ray thought fast and grabbed the trash can. Just in time, because Frank vomited a mess of dark blood. Seemingly without thinking, Gerard reached out and stroked the hair back from his face. Mikey felt the tension in his body would shatter him like a wine glass, but he ignored the shaking of his hands as he knelt on the floor. 

“God, he’s sick,” Gerard said. He was pressing the back of his hand to Frank’s forehead, like Mom used to. “Feel that, Mikey. He’s burning up.”

The terrified animal part of Mikey’s brain didn’t want to touch Frank for fear the twisting monstrosity would come back. He shoved it down, and touched Frank’s face. Feverish heat rolled off him in waves, and Mikey let loose a litany of curses.

“You’re sure he wasn’t cursed?” he muttered. He used his thumb to peel Frank’s eyelid open, watching the pupil contract but not find focus. 

“This is bad,” Ray said, unnecessarily. Frank’s retches subsided, and he set the trash can down within grabbing distance. Mikey suddenly understood Gerard’s compulsion to stroke Frank’s hair, to offer some kind of comfort. God, his friend looked inches from death and he had no idea how to help beyond that placid little motion.

“That you, Mikey?” Frank’s voice was wrecked, no more than a miserable croak.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, not sure if he was allowed to feel relieved. “How do you feel?” Stupid question, but he felt like he had to ask it.

“Bad,” Frank said. “I’ll be fine.” He made to push himself upright, but Ray stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“No offence, but you look like shit,” he said. “Stay there a second. I don’t want you fainting again.”

Frank batted him away, and succeeded in both sitting up and opening his eyes. He looked like an animated corpse. The gaunt lines of his face gave the impression that his skin was falling off his bones. And Mikey didn’t like the look in his eyes at all. It was like something was wearing Frank’s face.

Mutely he stood up, testing his weight on his feet. His gait was an awkward shuffle towards the bathroom, but nobody tried to stop him as he leaned against the wall to brush his teeth, periodically spitting red into the sink. He took the silver ring out of his lip with a pained twist to his face.

Gerard caught Mikey’s eye, and Mikey could read what he was thinking in his expression. “ _He needs a witch doctor_.”

“ _In a bad way,_ ” Mikey nodded back.

“You’re doing that thing again, aren’t you?” Brian said. Mikey felt unaccountably guilty.

“He needs a witch doctor,” Mikey said. What he didn’t say was “No human moves like that,” but the message got across. 

Frank spit into the sink a final time. “No he doesn’t,” he said. 

“Frank, you’re coughing up blood,” Ray said, rather reasonably. Somehow they knew that mentioning the terrible, thrashing movement wouldn't lead to anything good. Frank shrugged, and that at least was more himself.

“Ray’s right, you need help,” Brian said. Normally Frank would have balked at his authority, but he shook his head.

“Really,” he said. “I feel better. Look, I’m standing.” He held out his arms, failing at a sarcastic flourish.

“A minute ago you were spitting cancer blood into the trash can,” Gerard said, clearly taking Ray’s side.

“Cancer blood?” Frank looked confused, and Mikey expected that little eyebrow quirk he did, but it didn’t come.

Gerard’s mouth twisted. “I don’t know,” he said, obviously embarrassed. “I read it somewhere. If you cough up real dark blood it can mean you have cancer.”

“I do _not_ have fucking cancer,” Frank said, as if saying it made it true, but immediately countered his own point as he started coughing again. He grabbed one of the hotel washcloths, bracing himself on the counter and holding it over his mouth as he rode out the fit. Mikey’s chest bruised with sympathy and fear as Frank tried to crumple the towel so nobody would see the blood on it. 

“I’m _fine,_ ” he repeated, sitting back on Brian’s bed. It fell on deaf ears.

“We’ll see,” Brian said, as Ray wordlessly helped Frank out of his shoes and jacket, passing him a shirt that hadn’t quite crossed over into the realm of “biohazard.” It was just big enough to make Frank look even smaller. His attitude usually filled a room more than his stature, and on a stage he was ten feet tall, but stripped of that he was little more than five-foot-six and deathly sick.

Gerard caught Mikey’s eye again, and they both were thinking the same thing. It was about the furthest thing from ideal, but they would be hard pressed to come up with a better option that didn’t involve leaving Frank to suffer.

“Doctor Ballato.”


	4. Witch Doctor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rhianne:
> 
> Thank you for destroying my writing out of love.

Lindsey Ballato W.D. was based in Jersey, and was one of the only people Gerard wholeheartedly trusted with his life. Her, Batman and Mikey, and Batman was debatable, given the numerous incarnations of the character. More importantly, she was the only licensed witch doctor he knew within a ten mile radius of whatever town this was. 

It had been an odd combination of his guilt and fear for Mikey’s life eating away at each other in his head for the past day. He would never admit it out loud, but in a perverse way he was thankful that Frank was sick. It wasn’t like he was glad he was suffering or anything, but after the twist of directionless worry- _cum_ -hostility, the clear-cut goal of “Don’t let Frank fucking die,” was refreshing.

Gerard had no idea how, but Ray convinced Frank to lay down. He probably hoped he would sleep, but the best Ray could get him to do was flip through the channel guide. His coughing fits were frequent and jarring.

“Frank.”

“Yes?” Gerard blinked. Nothing so prim had ever passed Frank’s lips, and it was just far enough out of character for him to do a double-take.

“How do you feel about going to Dr. Ballato?”

“No,” Frank said. He snapped the channel guide closed to punctuate his point. “No doctors.”

“Witch doctor, Frank,” Mikey corrected. “She’s not gonna poke you with shit.”

“I know that,” he said. “I just don’t need any kind of doctor.” He turned away and coughed with his mouth closed. Gerard saw him swipe blood off his lip.

“Sure you don’t,” he said, and Frank gave him a scathing look. That, at least, was familiar.

Gerard knew in his gut that going back to Jersey was the only option. He didn’t need a vision to tell him that, but he wished he would have another one anyway. Something to tell him that there was another future that didn’t end up with Mikey’s corpse rotting in Inkwell Creek. The thought made him sick, not for the first time. But at the moment, Frank’s death seemed nearer than Mikey’s.

***

Hours later, and through probably black magic and Ray putting on his best pouty face, Frank slept. Splayed over the duvet with his face smashed into a pillow.

Brian gathered Gerard, Mikey, and Ray in a tight bunch around the coffee table so they could speak with low heads and lower voices. The first thing he said was, “We have to go to Jersey. He’s fucked up bad.”

“Agreed,” said Ray, then looked at Gerard. “You’re cool with it?”

“Not really,” Gerard said truthfully. It felt like moving the queen for the first time on a chessboard, putting Frank and Mikey both near Inkwell Creek. “But I can’t see any other option.”

Brian sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “Look, I was talking to my friend from Eyeball–”

“That California band?” Mikey asked. Brian nodded.

“Let me guess,” said Ray. “That dick of a manager dipped and now they want you to fill in.”

“Yahtzee,” Brian said. “Obviously I’m gonna stay until Frank’s…” He waved a hand. “...stable, I guess. I was thinking about not going at all."

“No, you should go,” Gerard said, then a second later realized that sounded like he _wanted_ Brian to leave. “I mean, we don’t mind. You know what I mean?” Brian was used to working with bands with more of a following, and was with them by obligation of friendship. Not that he didn’t enjoy occasionally driving the van and calling around for gigs, organizing an unofficial tour schedule, but it wasn’t sustainable. 

“It doesn’t mean I don’t care, it’s just–” Brian started, apologetic, but Mikey cut him off.

“Dude,” he said, in his calm, convincing way. “It’s fine. This whole thing will be fine once we get to Dr. Ballato, anyway.”

This past day, Gerard felt like he was more worried about Mikey’s safety than Mikey was. Stuff like this made him torn between pride and jealousy of the fact that Mikey could stay so cool on the outside, when Gerard felt like he was full of hairline cracks, brittle and lashing.

But he trusted Dr. Ballato. She was the one he’d gone to about his first visions in his childhood, and he’d never known her to be wrong. His visions, on the other hand, had been. Time was still an uncertain tangle, and maybe, just maybe, he’d try to have some faith.

***

Frank Iero was in pieces.

Or, no, that wasn’t right. Or was it? If he was in pieces he would have gone crazy with his consciousness all split up. Or maybe he had gone crazy. Maybe that was why he couldn’t feel whole. Maybe that was why his awareness, or what he had left of it, was floating somewhere he imagined his subconscious resided.

He didn’t _really_ know anything, but he could be probably-sure and probably-confident that this was a place beyond his body. A place where he didn’t need hands to touch or eyes to see. To see double and triple. To touch dark and light threads at the same time. Maybe he _was_ going crazy.

He should be scared. Started to be. Started to wonder why he had no eyes to see from and no hands to feel with. His very nature told him to look, to understand, to fight. Sweep away the curtain and find mortal senses again. Fight the growing pressure to _scatter_.

But he couldn’t do it. All he could do was drift, and feel himself stretching thinner.

***

Frank wasn’t kicking and screaming when they dragged him into the van and onto the road to Jersey, but he was pretty damn close. His litany of complaints and insistence that he was “-fine, goddammit, I don’t need a doctor,” nearly drove Gerard to tearing his hair out, and that was before Ray dragged him by his collar and seatbelted him in the van with the finality of someone clipping a straightjacket.

Thankfully, they were on the fringes of New Jersey already. Even though two nights ago was the furthest they’d ever driven for a gig, it wasn’t a world tour, just Pennsylvania. Crossing state lines made Gerard’s brain buzz with anxiety, and it was only when Mikey put a hand on his knee he realized he was jogging his leg like crazy.

“It’s fine,” Mikey said. Gerard managed a weak smile and a promise to himself to not let his brother out of his sight.

Brian was driving because he still felt guilty, and once they were in familiar territory Gerard started to direct him along streets and shortcuts to get to the clinic. Frank was suspiciously quiet, but probably just because he’d surrendered to his fate. Either that or Ray had gagged him. 

The entrance to Magical Ailments Clinic dredged up conflicting memories for Gerard. On one hand, it was where his visions had been explained and energy signature tested, been given an answer to why he was different. Of course, the other side of that coin was the leers from people just outside the parking lot, the hisses of “wick,” that followed him through the doors, no matter who he was with.

Although, a clump of his four best friends proved to be the company he needed to ward off the assholes and set up an appointment for Frank with Doctor Ballato.

Frank resumed his raving in the waiting room, but had enough sense in him to keep his voice down. So as not to disturb the nearby woman with moss growing on her skin, or the guy who seemed to have grafted an extra ear – definitely not human – to his forehead. Standard fare, really. 

“Frank, I swear to God,” Brian said. “It’s like you want to die or something.”

“I am not dying,” Frank said. “I’ve spent the last two hours telling you it’s just a cough.”

His “just a cough” made his voice hoarse and eyes bloodshot, and brought a faint gray tinge to his skin. If Ballato didn’t find anything wrong with him, Gerard would eat his goddamn shoe. He leaned over and told this to Mikey. He responded with a little amused smile, which made Gerard feel better.

They got Frank into a room with the collective force of all of their glares, and ignored the medical assistant’s raised eyebrow when none of them agreed to leave the room, despite there only being two extra chairs.

The assistant went through the standard questions: "What's your name and age? Are you able to use magic? Is your body deceased? Is this your original body? Are you under any enchantments?"

To the last one, Frank's response was an emphatic, "No."

Ray piped up. "Not that we know of," he said. He tried to look stern, but the effect was minimal given that Brian was basically sitting in his lap.

"I see," the assistant said, marking something on her clipboard. "And your relationship to Mr. Iero is…?"

"Family." The word flew out of Gerard's mouth of its own accord, and he immediately wanted to melt into the floor. He avoided looking at anyone as he finished, "For all intents and purposes."  
The assistant nodded, said Doctor Ballato would be in shortly, and closed the door behind her, tucking her pen behind her ear.

Mikey was looking at Gerard with something sickeningly soft in his eyes, but mercifully no one else teased Gerard. Frank kicked his heels against the base of the bed he was perched on, but that was it before Doctor Lindsey Ballato entered the room.

She wore that smile edged with mischief that hadn't changed since Gerard had known her, or more accurately, fallen head over heels in love at the ripe old age of twelve. It was the awestruck kind of crush only a kid could have. Mikey had teased him mercilessly when he told him, and even now, more than ten years later, he ignored the bony elbow that jabbed him in the side. Especially ignored the flirty eyebrows that made Mikey look ridiculous. He wasn't _like_ that anymore, like a kid crushing on his fucking babysitter or something.

She acted comically startled at seeing Gerard and Mikey crammed into the same uncomfortable chair. "Can't stay away, huh, boys?" she said, then turned to Frank. "Frank Iero?" She pronounced his last name right.

"That's me," he said, in that voice that insured sympathy even though he didn't want it to.

“Lindsey Ballato, nice to meet you.”

"Your ears are red," Mikey told Gerard.

"Fuck off," Gerard told Mikey.

"Well, Frank, what seems to be wrong with you?" Dr. Ballato said, with that amiable grin that even Frank couldn't resist.

"Ask them," Frank said, nodding towards the clump of four dudes in two chairs. "They're more worried about me than I am."

She wheeled a stool out from under the desk and sat down. She was tall, and this put her on eye level with Frank. "I'd like to hear it from you first.”

Frank shrugged, suddenly more cooperative than he’d been in hours. “I have a cough,” he said. “It started...what? Not even a day ago.”

“I see,” said Dr. Ballato, eyes narrowed in thought. “And have you done any magic recently?”

“Magic?” Frank said. “I’m not witch-blooded. I thought I told the assistant that.”

“It’s all right,” Dr. Ballato said. “I get you might not want to admit you’re witch-blooded, but if you’ve ever heard about safe spaces, this is probably the safest there is. Nobody’s gonna judge you here.”

Gerard remembered getting a variation of that same comfort when he was a kid. But Frank couldn’t use magic. Or could he? They would have known by now, unless he was really good at hiding it. But this was Frank – straightforward, here-I-am Frank. He wouldn’t have hidden something like this.

“Ma’am,” he started – another odd turn of phrase for him, “I’d tell you if I could, but I’m about as ‘vanilla human’ as you can get.”

If it was possible, Dr. Ballato looked confused. She gestured to Gerard and his cluster of friends, and asked Frank, “You’re comfortable with them knowing anything about your diagnosis?”

“Yes,” Frank said, after a hesitation. “But I’m not witch-blooded.”

“That’s not what your energy reading is telling me,” she said. She held out a hand as if to touch Frank’s shoulder. Contact would give her a better reading, and enchanted instruments even more so. Gerard knew she preferred basic contact readings first, before resorting to machines. “May I?” she said, but he visibly recoiled. “Frank, you’ve got energy rolling off you in waves. More than Gerard, even.” 

Everyone balked at that. 

Gerard was a foreseer – the only kind of witch-blooded person with so much energy running through them that it was impossible to control it. Useless to try to put a leash on it like other practitioners could. It wasn’t unheard of for a foreseer to gain control over their abilities, but it took an olympic class magic-user. Someone with extraordinary willpower. Someone as stubborn as...well, Frank.

And now Dr. Ballato was telling them that the amount of supernatural energy running through Frank was somehow more than a fucking foreseer.

Frank looked like he was going to be sick for the umpteenth time today. His knuckles were white from gripping the edge of the bed. “How much energy?” he managed.

“So much energy I’m not sure how you’re still conscious,” Dr. Ballato answered. “Just hang tight, I’ll be right back, all right?”

She turned to leave, and then between one blink and the next, Frank was on his feet and at the door, bracing himself across it as a barrier. It was so fast Gerard felt like his brain had to reboot to catch up.

“Frank!” Ray said, alarmed.

“I can’t let you leave,” Frank said. His head was ducked like he was ready for a fight, and he was sending some goddamn mixed signals. One minute he would have rather died than see Dr. Ballato, and now he was ready to barricade her in the room.

Doctor Ballato’s face was a mask of carefully concealed alarm. "Frank, I need to leave. I'll return in ten minutes. It’s not advisable to get your heart rate up." 

“No,” Frank said. “I can’t let you leave.”

“Why?” said Dr. Ballato. She was inching closer, and Gerard felt like the air in the room might snap with tension.

“You can’t leave,” Frank said, like a broken record. He was baring his teeth, screaming threat from every line of his body. Dr. Ballato reached for the door handle, and he lunged.

It was so fast, his hands closed around her throat before Gerard had time to stand up. Suddenly people were yelling. Mikey and Gerard got to Frank first, pried his vice grip away as he started to thrash and curse as Ray jumped between Dr. Ballato and the raving beast Frank had become. 

A litany of, “What the fuck,” spilled out of Gerard’s mouth as Frank tried to throw off his grip. He tried to wrench Frank’s arm so he couldn’t swing it and got a knee in the gut for his trouble. It wasn’t a hard hit, but it was right in the diaphragm and he wheezed, falling to one knee. Then Brian swooped in and grabbed Frank from behind, who kicked and thrashed so violently his feet came off the floor. Gerard watched in terror. Whatever the hell was going on, it wasn’t Frank. It just wasn’t. What was behind his eyes didn’t even look like a person.

Dr. Ballato stepped forward, grabbed the sides of Frank’s face, and said, “Sleep.”

It was like she’d flipped a switch. Frank’s eyes rolled back in his head and he went slack-jawed and boneless in Brian’s grip, neutralized. Brian cursed as his knees buckled under the sudden weight, joining Gerard on the floor. Then suddenly everything was quiet again. Save for Gerard coughing the air back into his lungs.

Ray’s voice was a ghastly whisper when he said, “What the hell was that?”


	5. Echo Scan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by the illustrious and fearsome Rhianne, as always.
> 
> Honestmouse, escapeacity, and gotemotrash: thanks for the kudos, enjoy the rest of the story x

Frank slept under a blanket of carefully woven spells.

For a little while, Mikey thought he might faint, or throw up, or both in no particular order, but sitting down with Gerard and listening to him breathe gave him some kind of hold on reality. Ray and Brian talked softly over a sheaf of paperwork, a lot of stuff about insurance and how “...he doesn’t have any, dumbass thinks he’s gonna live forever.”

Mikey thought, _no, we’re just dirt poor,_ but Brian knew that. He was just filling the space in the room. Mikey felt awfully melodramatic when he looked at Frank in the hospital bed and thought about the “everyone looks smaller under white sheets,” thing. It was stupid; Frank wasn’t dying. And the white sheets hid restraints that would keep his limbs down if Dr. Ballato’s magic that kept him unconscious somehow malfunctioned.

No, he wasn’t dying, but something sinister was going on.

Once Gerard could speak without wheezing, he was the first to start apologizing profusely for Frank’s...what? Episode? Nervous break? Complete fucking freakout? Apparently it took more than that to rattle Ballato. It made Mikey wonder what other stuff she saw on a daily basis.

There were some hastily exchanged words between Brian and Dr. Ballato, who assured him that it was extremely unlikely that Frank was dying, that he was stable, and Brian should probably stop biting his nails, because this was a clinic and he could catch something. Mikey could practically feel the anxiety rolling off him, was tempted to shake him a little bit to get him to loosen up. He had a good reason to be antsy. Mikey finally pried it out of him that if he wanted to make it across the country to California he’d have to catch a flight that left in ten hours.

“I don’t want to leave him. I feel like a dick,” he said.

“You are a dick, just not for that reason,” Mikey said, quite reasonably, which at least got a laugh out of the guy.

“You heard Ballato, he’s okay,” Gerard said.

“He doesn’t look okay,” Brian said. 

Gerard conceded, “Okay, you’re right, but he’s not gonna be mad if he wakes up and you’re not here.” Like he was the Frank-whisperer. 

“You’re more worried about this than we are, dude,” Ray said. “Go make money. We’re a phone call away.” He tapped his finger on the plastic case of his cell phone, sticking part of the way out of his pocket. Mikey knew the battery was probably dead because he always forgot to charge it, but the point was still there.

“You’ll call me if anything changes?” Brian said, looking at each of them in turn. A doctor in scrubs walked swiftly past the open door, sparing a nod and smile for its occupants.

“Yes, and we’ll put you on speaker so Frank can cuss you out when he wakes up,” Ray said.

“And I’ll call you every twenty minutes, tell you how much I love you-” Gerard said. Mikey was surprised and maybe a little delighted at his humor, which had been sparse lately.

Brian pretended to gag. “God, no. Spare me.” That had done the trick, though, and he stepped outside the room to call his brother for a ride.

It was goodbye time ten minutes later. Hugs and “Don’t forget to call,”s were exchanged, then Brian ended up beside Frank’s bed. His hair stood on end as he got closer to Frank’s sleeping form because of the spells charging the air. 

“Figure it’s not the best idea to wake you up so we can talk,” he said. Mikey found it equal parts endearing and embarrassing that he was talking to someone who couldn’t hear. It was the thought that counted, though, he supposed. “See you later, Frankie.” Having said his piece, he stood up. He tried in vain to flatten his hair.

“Come on,” said Ray. “We’ll walk you out.”

Gerard stood up and joined both of them at the door. “You coming, Mikey?”

“I think I’ll stay with Frank,” said Mikey. He didn’t know why, exactly. It just felt like something he should do. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of Frank being alone in a sterile, pastel room without a friend nearby. Gerard gave him a look, but he didn’t move. 

“All right,” he said. “We’ll be back in a second.”

“I know. See you later, Brian,” Mikey said. The three of them proceeded into the hallway, but not after Gerard hesitated at the threshold. He looked like he was about to object to Mikey staying, but a second later turned and followed Ray and Brian into the hall.

Mikey turned back to Frank and idly wondered when Dr. Ballato would return. She’d taken an echo scan of Frank after he’d been situated in this more permanent room, and left to get the images processed into something visible by non-magic users like Mikey. To the best of his understanding, an echo scan was a magic ultrasound. There were probably big differences people smarter than him could point out, but all he cared about was that it could show them Frank’s insides and what was wrong with them. 

He drummed his fingers on the railing of Frank’s bed, thinking about nothing in particular except that he wanted to stay close. Just in case...of something, he really didn’t know. Just in case he woke up.

Frank’s head turned on the pillow, and fear rushed in Mikey’s blood as he remembered back at the motel. The inhuman twist of limbs and Frank’s hanging, vacant head. But all he did was try to pry his eyes open, and rasp something that was probably a curse.

“Frank? You awake?” Mikey said, and Frank started coughing with his mouth closed. To keep from spewing blood everywhere, Mikey thought, wincing.

“I am now,” he said, and yawned. There was blood between his teeth and, God, he sounded like he smoked three packs a day. He tried to sit up, but didn’t get very far because of the bands around his wrists and ankles. “Mikey, why am I tied up?”

Mikey was suddenly overcome with so much bleeding sympathy that he felt like it kicked him in the gut. That fishhook-in-soft-tissue tug again. “For your own safety,” he said. It was a lie by omission and Frank knew it. He didn’t press, though. He flung his head back on the pillow and looked like he instantly regretted it. It didn’t cross Mikey’s mind to get Dr. Ballato.

“Where is everyone?” Frank asked. Without hands to rub his eyes, he blinked the sleep from them. 

“Outside,” Mikey said. “They’re walking Brian out to leave for California.”

“Right,” Frank said. He looked like he was trying to file his thoughts behind his eyes and not really succeeding. With his hand nearest to Mikey he reached out as much as the restraints would allow. Mikey took his hand without hesitation, ignoring the buzz of active spells over his skin and the feverish heat of Frank’s skin. He couldn't get enough of Frank suddenly. Wanted to keep him here and talk to him into next week.

“It’s probably...freaky, for you, being back in New Jersey. With me. With Gerard’s vision,” Frank said. His voice was clearer, but not by much. Mikey shrugged.

“No offense, but I don’t think you could do much damage, sick like you are.” A voice whispered about Frank’s hands reaching to crush Dr. Ballato’s throat, but it somehow seemed unimportant. Mikey trusted Frank with his life.

“You’re right,” Frank said, with a little smile. “I’m glad you came, Mikes. I need you.”

Mikey thumped him on the forehead. “Gross. I hate it when you get sentimental.”

Frank grinned at him. It was a shadow of what it usually was, paired with sallow skin and unfocused eyes, but there all the same. Mikey didn’t know how he was breathing so easy, what with his best friend looking like he was wasting away, but he felt tension drain out of his shoulders all the same. Maybe it was the spells Dr. Ballato had placed working on him as well as Frank. Frank had drawn him close, after all.

He heard shuffling, quick footsteps outside, but didn’t pay them attention. Frank was asking him something.

“Mikey, do you trust me?”

Mikey tilted his head in confusion. “Yeah,” he said. “Why?”

“I know Gerard doesn’t. And I just...I want to know if you’re on my side.”

Mikey hated it that there were "sides." Like he could either be with Frank, or against him by acknowledging that Gerard had reason to be wary. "Frank, I can't-"

Then Ray and Gerard stepped back into the room, following Dr. Ballato. She had a manilla folder in her hands and looked almost startled when she saw that Frank was awake. Or maybe there was more to it than that. She had a look about her that suggested something else at work.

After a hello to Frank, she said, "Excuse me, Mikey, I need to check a few things," which was a nice way of telling him to move. Only when he did he realized that he'd been practically glued to Frank, almost uncomfortably close. Like back in the motel. He let go of his hand and stood up next to Gerard and Ray. Gerard was nervous and chewing on his thumbnail. Ray poked at his hand to get him to quit it.

"We don't know if it's anything," Ray said to Gerard, who responded with a look that said _obviously it's something_.

"Am I missing something?" Mikey asked.

"No," Dr. Ballato jumped in. "I wanted you all together for when you saw Frank's echo scan." It was strange that she didn't include Frank in her address, even though it was his organs they were looking at. But what was even more strange was that Frank had no objection. Hell, he almost looked demure in that bed. If he wasn't restrained he probably would have crossed his ankles. Mikey looked away from him, feeling chilled and awkward.

"I'm violating so many regulations by doing this." Dr. Ballato mostly said this to herself as she leafed through the folder and produced a few glossy photographs. 

The first in the stack was what looked like any textbook echo scan—medical magic only visible to a witch doctor's eye represented in tones of blue on paper. Frank's bones and organs. Mikey didn't understand her urgency, and neither did Ray or Gerard by the look of it. They all looked to her to explain.

"This is the high contrast image," she said, which meant only a little sense to Mikey.

"He looks okay," Ray said, ready to be proven wrong, but Dr. Ballato nodded.

"Usually," she said, "we can see most major ailments with a high contrast scan. But sometimes things can conceal themselves, and we have to take down the contrast until something reveals itself on paper."

Gerard looked as confused as Mikey felt. "What are you saying?" he asked.

"I'm saying," Dr. Ballato said, "this thing can _hide_." She showed them the photos in order of contrast, the blues getting darker and more consistent in color as she flipped through them. In the last photo, even though Mikey could barely distinguish the hues of blue, the image looked fried. Pixelated in a way that reminded him of those photographs of old nuclear power plants that had suffered core meltdowns. The photos where they didn't even need a camera, where the radiation burned it's image straight into the film.

"Please explain it," he said. He tried to keep his voice level. He didn't have to be a foreseer to know something was up.

"There's a foreign mass in both lungs. I would say it was a tumor, except for this;" she said, pointing with a pinky finger. "it looks like the same thing is encasing his spinal cord."

Mikey followed the line of the photographed spine with a fascinated kind of horror. He saw it. The whole thing encased in the same, fried black mass in the lungs. _The_ lungs, _the_ spine, because, God, how could this be Frank? What kind of hell had he woken up to on the morning before their last show? Show. They'd have to cancel because they were booked tonight, weren't they? They'd fall apart without Frank's guitar.

"Do you know what it is?" Ray asked. He was really fighting to keep a cool composure.

"I've never seen anything like it," Dr. Ballato said. "It's definitely supernatural, but it exhibits all the symptoms of cancer. It's a malignant growth, and it's spreading through his central nervous system. I strongly suggest him being admitted." She looked back at Frank, who seemed to be perfectly content counting the ceiling tiles. Her eyes flicked to the restraints.

"There's something you're not telling us," Gerard said. And then that finally caught Frank's interest. He still didn't speak, but sat up straighter, listening.

"It wouldn't be prudent since I can't prove it. I'd get in a lot of trouble with my superiors," Dr. Ballato said.

"Then tell us as a friend, not as a doctor," Gerard said. "Please."

Dr. Ballato sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose. "It feels like a parasite. Like it's alive. And since…" she cursed and beckoned them all closer. “Since it’s attacking his nervous system, I don’t think Frank has the wheel anymore.”

A chill washed over Mikey.

“It can’t be a Class One, can it?” Ray asked.

“No,” said Dr. Ballato. “It’s something bigger.”


	6. Brother's Keeper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by the astonishing and astronomical Rhianne
> 
> Thanks for the nice comment, Natileroxs—this one's for you x

" _It's something bigger._ "

The words doused Mikey like ice water. A shock chill of terror followed by immediate, vehement rejection. He didn't realize he was shaking his head until words started spilling out of his mouth in defence of Frank.

In the middle of, "I _just_ talked to him-" Ray got that look on his face that meant he'd figured something out. It usually went along with his prized Gibson Les Paul in his lap and a riff that came out just right. He scooped an arm around Mikey and steered him to the door.

"We're not going far," he told Gerard, who reached out to stop them.

Mikey fought him, but Ray was like a moving train when he had something in his head. He led Mikey out the door and into the hallway.

“What the hell, Toro?” Mikey batted him on the shoulder, and Ray grabbed his wrists. Mikey sucked in a deep breath through his nose, and almost staggered at how _clean_ the air felt. He hadn’t noticed how thick the greasy turn of magic was back in the room with Frank. 

“Mikey, you don’t see yourself,” Ray said. He let him go.

“What am I doing?” Mikey asked. It wasn’t rhetorical. 

“I don’t think _you’re_ doing anything,” Ray said. “Remember back in the motel? When Frank went all-” Ray raised his hands and dropped his head, like a scarecrow, in a perfect imitation of Frank. “You walked towards him. And just now you were talking to him and holding his hand like he didn’t just try to kill Dr. Ballato.”

It dawned on Mikey. “He’s, it’s-” He clapped a hand over his mouth. “-manipulating me,” he said. And he was an idiot. A grade A idiot because how the hell did he not notice it?

“No,” Ray said. Mikey could practically see the wheels turning in his brain. “He wasn’t. You would have noticed, right? I think he’s tempting you.”

That one word was the final piece that brought his spinning thoughts into alignment. It made so much sense. Temptation was a deeper, more visceral kind of manipulation. It acted on a person’s desires and skewed them, leaving the decision-making up to them, but the motivation behind it at the mercy of the tempter. Mikey had _wanted_ to come closer. He’d wanted to talk, wanted to defend Frank, or whatever the hell was using his body. Wanted to trust him. That was why he’d never had a doubt. Because he was weak enough to let it happen.

It was maddening, and now that Ray had figured it out, Mikey felt like a passenger in his own head. A little tug here or there on the needle of his moral compass and he’d be effectively lost. And to top it all the fuck off, there was only one thing that could wield temptation like a blade. The subject of many cautionary tales, religious doctrine, and fine blends of history, fact, and rumor.

“It’s a demon.” He was sure of it.

***

The idea that a demon had something to do with this had been brewing in Ray’s head for a while, now that he told Mikey and saw the horror on his face, he felt less like an idiot for bringing it up. He wasn’t suggesting that something as absurd as...he didn’t know, the mothman, was causing all of this. Demons were real. Always had been and always would be. The only caveat was that all passages to Hell were sealed, and had been since the thirteenth century. 

The idea of the demon was sensationalized for horror movies and the like, and it was only in the last twenty years that there was a real concern about the weakening of the barrier gates of Hell. It was an emerging sword of Damocles a lot of people liked to ignore. It didn’t change the fact that what was happening to Frank was ticking all the boxes. 

They were in the shit for sure. 

And Mikey looked inches from a crisis. Privately, Ray thought he was perfectly justified in it, and would probably have one himself if not for the fact that he took up the duty of being the stable one. 

“Mikey,” he said, calling up calm, reasonable Ray. “Look at me.”

Mikey did, and in his eyes Ray saw the unique fear that his thoughts weren’t his own. “It only works when you’re near him. You were yourself again as soon as I took you out here.”

“You sure?” Mikey said. He looked gaunt from worry.

“I’m sure,” Ray said. “It’s powerful magic, Mikes. Everything has a limit.” Sometimes he surprised himself with what came out of his mouth. He sounded more wise than he felt, but then again, he was usually right about things. Better to not get a big head about it, though. 

“And besides,” he continued, because when Mikey quieted it meant he was thinking a mile a minute. And Ray had a pretty good idea of what was on his mind: _What if he’s doing it to all of us?_ “If it takes that much effort to tempt you, doing it to both of us and a foreseer at the same time is probably hard. If not impossible.”

“Yeah,” Mikey said. He ducked his head and let out a long sigh. “I don’t want to go back in.”

Neither did Ray, but he kept that to himself. “We should stay with Gerard. He’ll probably short circuit if he’s around Dr. Ballato for too long.”

Mikey laughed, a little more than the joke warranted, but that was just what Mikey did—laughed when he was stressed to the point of tearing his hair out. 

Back inside, Ray tried his best to be comforting but not smothering, which just ended up with him standing a little closer to Mikey than he normally would. They exchanged sidelong glances with Gerard—wordless questions of _Are you okay?_ and _Are you thinking what we are?_

Ray didn’t want to look at Frank, but at the same time he felt like he might die if he didn’t. Frank was half-reclined, picking at his fingernail and looking bored. Ray could only guess what was happening inside that head. Maybe the two beings inside were duking it out for control of the body, or maybe both Ray and Mikey were crazy and there was no demon after all.

Ray liked to think himself knowledgeable about the supernatural beings that could “seriously mess shit up,” in Gerard’s words, and there was nothing else it could be. It explained everything, aligned perfectly with the world’s archaic knowledge of Demon. Everything Frank had said since Ray carried him back to the motel sounded not quite right. The rounder vowels and actual manners. Not to even mention when he went all scarecrow.

“He’s still tied down, right?” Ray asked Dr. Ballato, who nodded.

“We think we know what’s wrong with him,” said Gerard. Ray spared a thought for how much trouble Ballato could get in for breaking close to a million rules about patient confidentiality.

“What a coincidence,” Mikey said dryly. “We do too.”

***

Frank had come to understand where he was, and that whatever had put him there did not want him to leave.

He existed in the soft gray area between sleep and wakefulness, and the closer he got to waking up, the harder it was to breathe. Drowning in his own head. Like being a diver in reverse, the closer to the surface, the more the pressure. At least he could hold himself together. 

It was touch and go until he’d found his resolve in the jumbled mess of _Frank_ that had seemingly been thrown apart like a deck of dropped playing cards. He found his will and held on. He resisted the pressure to _scatter_ until he had a foothold on his own reality. And then he set his sights to the surface.

***

“It’s a demon,” said Mikey and Gerard in unison. Clearly Gerard had talked to Dr. Ballato about it, and he’d been the one to say it out loud.

Then Gerard said, “Thank God I’m not crazy.” The relief was mutual. It helped that Ballato seemed to agree. 

They all turned to look at Frank—well, the thing in Frank's body—who looked extremely uncomfortable. "A _demon_?" He– _it_ , said. "Come on, don't you think that's a little extreme?" His voice had suddenly gone all high and indignant.

Ray spoke up, something he knew for damn sure he wouldn't have done if Frank wasn't tied down. "Then explain the echo scan. And what happened in the motel," he said. He tried to put a name to what he was feeling, and it took him a good while to call it betrayal. This thing had taken Frank's body, his _brain_. He didn't even know where the real Frank was. If he was safe, or lost somewhere in the recesses of his own subconscious, never to return.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Frank said, desperation creeping into his voice. "I'm me."

"Right," said Gerard. "What did you do with Frank?"

"I didn't-" Then his eyes locked on the open door, left ajar by Ray. His lunge was a second too late, because Frank snapped the high-security grade restraints, and bolted. Shouts of alarm came from the hallway.

Ray heard himself say, " _Shit_!" and less than a second later the three of them followed with Gerard in the lead. They ignored Dr. Ballato's shout to stop. Ray already knew it was a bad idea, but hell if he was doing it anyway. If there was ever a time to call Shade Special Services, this was it, but Mikey beat him to the punch at dialing the authorities on supernatural criminals without breaking stride.

They crashed out into the dusky sunlight, Mikey talking fast over the phone and giving the address of the clinic.

"The van," Gerard said. "We gotta follow him."

"Are you crazy?" Ray said, but at the same time tossed him the keys. This was Gerard in full "save the world" mode, and nothing less than an act of God would stop him.

They piled in and held on while Gerard gunned it, and everything seemed impossibly loud with the roar of the engine and Mikey chattering fast into his phone. Gerard seemed to realize he had no idea where to go because none of them actually knew where Frank was. Mikey held his phone away from his ear and gave Gerard a look laden with meaning.

Gerard's eyes hardened, and he took a left turn, headed for Inkwell Park.

***

Frank was sharing his head with... something. The realization was like a kick in the teeth that almost pushed him under again during his claw to the surface. Whatever prison he was in, it was alive. Not in the human way, but capable of intelligent thought.

He could recognize that he was being blindfolded, subdued, and he needed to take back control. But it was like fighting anaesthesia. Stay awake. Otherwise he knew something bad was going to happen.

***

Gerard ran a red light and damn near sideswiped a cruiser. He got the van going as fast as any relic full of instruments and spite could go, but it wasn’t enough to beat Frank. It occurred to Ray that they knew jack shit about what demons could actually do. Sure he could passably recite history he learned in high school, but nothing in the way of practical knowledge. 

Mikey cursed at his phone and pounded it against the heel of his hand. 

“What happened?” Gerard asked. He took a hand off the steering wheel to press his fingers to his temple.

“Lost the signal,” Mikey said. “Oh no, is that a vision headache?”

“I don’t know,” Gerard said. He kept his eyes glued to the road, decidedly on nothing reflective. “I don’t think so. But there’s power in the air; can you feel it?”

Ray tried to concentrate, but anxiety made him clumsy. He’d take Gerard’s word for it. Besides, he didn’t look too good. Ray reached over and held a hand to Gerard’s forehead. Despite it being the tail end of September and the heating a distant memory in the van, he was sweating buckets, and felt like he was running a disastrously high fever. 

“Gee, I can drive,” said Mikey, when Gerard cursed and pressed his fingertips over his closed eye.

“We’re almost there,” Gerard gritted through his teeth. If it was a vision headache, he would have seen something by now. They struck quickly and efficiently, so it had to be the demon. Being witch-blooded, Gerard was sensitive to energy fields. To him it was probably like looking into a searchlight with night vision goggles, while Ray and Mikey were wearing blindfolds.

The little piece of land that was Inkwell Park came into view, and Gerard didn’t so much as park but fling the van at the curb and hope for the best. Outside, wind whipped the grass and flung leaves in loops, and even Ray’s hands were tingling with the sheer power charging the air. The amount of skill it must have taken to keep that much raw energy concealed was astronomical, and through his fear Ray only managed a pained thought for how much worse it must be for Gerard.

“We gotta help him,” Gerard said. None of them knew how, but hell if they were going to leave. It was Frank, their goddamn brother, and at the very least they could keep track of the demon until SSS got there. Maybe they could help him take back control of his body. 

Ray watched Mikey square his shoulders and walk towards his prophesied death and felt an odd rush of fear and affection for his friend. Then Gerard led them in a run and there was no more time to think about much of anything. 

They knew the park well, and down the embankment and next to the creek Ray caught sight of a figure doubled over in agony. Gerard’s nose started to bleed. 

Frank fell to his knees, creek water soaking into his jeans. He clutched his head and screamed. Screamed a horrific sound that cracked into silence. Ray felt like his bones were vibrating, and it was a pale comfort that it didn’t seem like Frank had noticed them yet. Ray decided that he was panicking. 

Then Gerard gasped. “It’s him,” he said. He spit blood on the grass and ran towards the embankment. Without thinking, Ray reached for Mikey’s arm and they followed, sliding down slippery grass.

“How do you know?” Ray asked.

“I just do,” Gerard said. Ray took his word for it, and took a running leap across the creek, Mikey in tow. He was ten feet from Frank when Frank finally noticed they were there and staggered to his feet. He looked like hell.

“Toro,” he said. His bloodshot eyes were the size of dinner plates. “Mikey.”

"Is the demon gone?" Gerard demanded. Frank shook his head and bit his lip so hard the skin broke.

"Something bad," he said. "The jig's up. Something bad's gonna happen."

"We called SSS," Mikey said. "Can you hold on until they get here?"

"It's gonna kill any witnesses," Frank grit out. "Doesn't want to be found."

Danger thickened the air like pea soup and concentrated adrenaline. Ray could have fucking screamed—he had no idea what to do. Frank’s knees buckled, and Mikey rushed forward to catch him. 

Frank thrashed and shoved Mikey away. " _No,_ " he said. "Get out. Get away from me. Run as far as you can."

It was too late as soon as Ray noticed the glint of a scalpel blade tucked into Frank’s shoe. There was a gag of sulfur in the scent of the air, then blood dribbled from Gerard’s ear and he collapsed with not so much as a whimper.

In the time it took for Ray to say his name, there was a scalpel sticking out of Mikey’s jugular vein. 

Ray didn’t know what happened next, or how long it took. He remembered _oh God, no,_ and he remembered throwing himself at Frank and finding empty space. Blood between Mikey’s lips and flowing red down Inkwell creek. How Gerard woke up to his worst nightmare and screamed for his brother and tore the scalpel out of his flesh. His fingerprints replacing Frank’s on the murder weapon, and no murderer in sight. 

Mikey Way didn’t get last words, and he died with his blood soaking into the knees of his brother’s jeans.


	7. Cost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the late/missed update—in compensation I'll post two chapters today and tentatively say I'll get back on schedule. Although the only promises I can make are those in which I say I'll continue to put these boys through hell. 
> 
> Thanks for the comment, Honestmouse x I hope this story continues to surprise and delight you
> 
> Beta read, as always, by the bodacious and bombastic Rhianne

“I wish it was Frank,” Gerard said, and Ray dropped the stack of tens he was holding.

Those were the first words he'd spoken in two days. They were flat and gravelly and Ray's heart hurt, so deeply and badly he felt like he might die. They’d both lived a lifetime in the past days of being on the run.

That's what he called it, because they'd effectively fled a crime scene. Mikey's body. Then Ray drove as far as the van would go on the remaining tank of gas. Smeared blood on the steering wheel and watched Gerard shut down. Watched his soul dim like a smothered candle flame. He didn’t sleep, and Ray couldn’t be a hundred percent sure if he was even breathing.

Ray drowned himself in any task he could find. Had paid for their motel in cash and held the door open as Gerard shuffled through into the dark. Ray turned the light on fast because he was afraid he would lose Gerard in the gloom. That he would evaporate and be chased away with the shadows when Ray flicked on the singular lightbulb. He didn’t, of course, but it felt like a close-run thing.

The first day, Ray showered. He brushed his teeth. He combed his hair and he drank a glass of water. He sorted the contents of his bag and he sorted his notebooks. He counted the abysmally small stack of cash that was all he and Gerard had left. Then he counted it again. Then he noticed a crescent of dry blood under one fingernail, and like a lightning strike everything slid into technicolor clarity.

Mikey was dead. 

It was like his air had been stolen. He barely had the presence of mind to lock himself away in the bathroom before he sobbed so wretchedly he felt like a dying thing. Mikey. Soft-smiling, little brother Mikey. Bass guitar and dry humor that always caught you at the best of times. Ray cried for him, slumped over the sink, as if it could help anything. As if he could ever shed enough tears to fill the gaping hole, the absence Mikey left behind. 

_You’re pathetic,_ he told himself. _Gerard’s got it so much worse. Get it together for him, at least._ He took his pain and tried to imagine it magnified tenfold, get a glimpse of what must be paralyzing Gerard, and he couldn’t do it. It was all too big anyway. It was too much to feel all at once.

So he counted cash.

And then Gerard spoke and it was such a shock it might as well have been a gunshot. “I wish it was Frank.”

“What?”

“I wish Frank was dead instead.”

Ray gaped. He could honestly say he’d never been scared of Gerard. Been scared _for_ him, sure, every time he had a vision, or forgot to take medicine afterwards and started crying blood. He managed intimidating when he wanted to, with cold eyes and an unexplainable otherness. But never had Ray seen that much freezing, undiluted fury in Gerard’s eyes, and it terrified him.

“Gerard,” Ray said. “Frank didn’t do it. He tried to get Mikey out, remember?”

“I don’t care,” Gerard said. He stood up. “I don’t–” He pulled at his hair and cursed.

“Gerard,” Ray said, but he had no idea what else to say. Gerard whirled, jabbing a finger in Ray’s face.

“My fucking brother is dead,” he said, lethally quiet. His voice cracked on the last word and he just started shouting. Like something was tearing loose and bleeding inside him. “Mikey’s dead. He’s fucking gone and he’s _dead_ and he’s _never coming back_!” His face was a picture of misery, and he’d never looked more alone. The rage drained out of him in the space of a moment. It was like his strings had been cut, knees going weak and Ray reaching out to catch him. 

“Ray,” he said. Just, “Ray.”

“I know,” Ray said. They sat on the edge of the hotel bed and Ray let Gerard curse the world and everything in it into the shoulder of his tee shirt. Words meant next to nothing. The best he could do was just be there. Rest his chin on top of Gerard’s head. They held each other up.

Some time later anger dulled into the cold, empty pit that came after crying about something too big to let out. As far as Ray knew, Gerard hadn’t slept in two days, so he got some water in him and made him lie down. He gave the usual, “I’m fine,”s and insisted he could stay up, but he was out like a light as soon as his head hit the pillow. 

Ray picked up the cash he’d dropped. As he stacked it neatly, folded it into his and Gerard’s wallets, he wondered how much it would cost to bring Mikey back. 

He pretended it was idle curiosity, at most a fascination, like Gerard’s with death and how to thwart it, but his denial sounded feeble even in his own head. How much would it cost? Everything to repair a body cooling in a morgue, and even more to shove a soul back into it. Necromancy was a pitfall of epic proportions into ethics and practices—the most severe taboo in magic. If you learned anything from grade school it was this: don't mess with drugs, death, or Elder gods. Although Ray thought it wouldn't kill the Elder gods to have a little sympathy.

He turned in early, let the past days play inside his eyelids as he lay down on the couch. It wasn’t catharsis so much as a way to keep the pain fresh. To press the punishing bruise that was Mikey’s absence. How much would it cost? Everything. The scary thing was that he was considering it. 

He slept like the dead, which was to say not well at all.


	8. News

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter of today's double update x

The last thing Frank saw before he was dragged back into his own subconscious was Mikey kneeling in the creek bed. 

It took a titanic effort to fight off the presence that pressed in on him from all sides. Even more to look his friends in the eyes and tell them to leave when all he wanted to do was beg for help. But as soon as he’d seen Gerard’s nose dripping blood, something clicked. He knew there was nothing they could do. The demon—because that’s what this thing was—didn’t need to hide, at least around Gerard, Ray, and Mikey. Just the shockwaves of its undisguised presence were enough to make Gerard bleed and Ray’s eyes go bloodshot. There was nothing to do except get them out. 

Then he’d lost his hold and went tumbling back under. Held himself together because he could not afford to scatter now. He held the line where he and the demon overlapped. Held on by the skin of his fucking teeth. He felt equal parts triumph and rage coming from the demon and could only guess what had happened.

He held it together because there was no other option, but on a logical level he was lost. There was no manual or grade-school health poster that told you what to do if you found a demon up your ass. 

The gates of Hell were supposed to be closed. There was news about the weakening of the gates as often as there was news about the hole in the ozone layer, but it always seemed like a far-off threat—one his great-grandkids would have to deal with.

Asking how and why wouldn’t solve anything, though. The real fight was cased inside his skull, where the only company was trying to beat him away from controlling his own damn body. Frank was alone, and the only thing that was going to get him through this was him. The thought terrified and steeled him. If he had anything it was his will. He was going to take back his body.

Hopefully Mikey was okay.

***

Gerard and Ray skipped town. Bought gas and winced at the receipt. Even though neither of them said it, the word, the thought, hung in the air like a spirit. Necromancy.

 _How much would it cost?_ Gerard thought. He drove the van because it was the only thing that made him feel like his head wasn’t spinning. He knew if Ray wasn’t in the seat next to him he would have yanked the wheel to the left just to feel something besides _Mikey Mikey Mikey,_ cavernous longing just to see his face again. His glasses on the tip of his nose.

Then he thought of Ray and common sense and grit his teeth, pulled himself together. He itched for a cigarette, even more for a drink. This wasn’t something he could throw out with an empty bottle, but if he was unconscious or dead he couldn’t feel much of anything. 

Craving was a sinister kind of hunger, eclipsed only by desire for the thing in Frank to pay. He wanted the demon to burn, be unmade, suffer a thousand times what it’d done to Mikey. With a jolt he realized that was the first time he’d thought about Frank since Mikey’s blood had turned Inkwell Creek red.

“Ray,” he said, some time later in a different motel. “What do we do about Frank?”

Ray’s hands stilled from taking a shirt out of his duffel bag. Gerard saw the guilt flash across his features and knew Frank hadn’t occupied many thoughts lately. 

“I don’t know,” Ray said. He pressed his fingers over his closed eye so hard it had to hurt. “Do you think we should watch the news?”

Gerard didn’t want to. Didn’t want to do much of anything except shove his fist in his mouth and scream for a long, long time. But it was probably a good idea. See what was going on. Ray always was the one who kept his head. Gerard nodded.

Ray took him by the hand and they sat on the edge of the bed, in front of the TV. He clicked the remote and found the news channel easily because there was only six to choose from. Cable was an unnecessary luxury. Commercials splattered the screen and Gerard stared with unseeing eyes until the three o'clock news began.

Just like that, he panicked. His throat tied itself into a knot and he couldn't breathe around it. The presenter was speaking but the TV might as well have been muted. What would he do if he saw Mikey on the screen? What would he do if they listed names of murder suspects and he saw Frank’s name? His own? What if they showed the body? A thought came to Gerard that he was glad his mom wasn't around to see this.

"Gerard." Ray was gripping his hand tight enough to hurt. "I can turn it off."

Gerard didn't have any words in him yet, so he shook his head. He returned Ray's iron grip. An overhead shot of Inkwell Park, swarming with personnel, and Gerard’s chest hurt so bad he thought he might die. He couldn’t look away.

The reporter spoke over footage of an eclectic mix of Jersey police and looming SSS agents. "Police and Shade Special Services continue to search for further evidence of foul play behind the death of local musician Michael Way.” There was no picture, and Gerard didn’t know if he was grateful or disappointed. “He was found stabbed to death on Thursday in Inkwell Park. There have been no witness reports of the incident.” The broadcast ploughed on, snappy facts about how Mikey’s immediate family—Gerard—couldn’t be contacted. Of course he couldn’t. Gerard had tossed his phone out the window of the van. Watched the screen and keypad hit asphalt and snap apart in the side view mirror.

“Local residents report power surges in the area, as well as interrupted cell signals and sudden drops in air quality likened to massive magical discharge. Those with poor respiratory function or high sensitivity to supernatural energy are advised to stay indoors.” 

And that was it. Less than two minutes. The reporter moved on to another body dredged out of the nearby lake, found when the investigators dragged it for more of the demon’s victims. Gerard stared at the screen as if watching the other stories would glean more information. A story about a dog with a prosthetic leg played and Ray switched off the TV. The room fell blessedly quiet. 

“We have to find him,” Ray said in an odd voice.

“What?” Gerard said. That was just enough to jolt him out of his stupor, make him at least verbal again. “We can’t go back there; we’re murder suspects. My fingerprints are on that scalpel.” Blood on his hands, tearing flesh and leaking veins.

Ray shook his head. “No, they would have issued a watch for us. And they would have mentioned the scalpel if they knew it was the—the weapon.” _The murder weapon._

Gerard forced himself to think, to quiet the drone of _Mikey Mikey Mikey_ in his head. Ray turned and grabbed his other hand, jostling him. There was the manic glint of an idea in his eyes. “We have to try to find Frank before SSS does,” he said. The words tumbled out of his mouth, tripping over each other like a botched guitar solo. “They kill people with Class Ones in their bodies. Drain their souls. Once they figure out Frank has a fucking demon in him they’ll kill him.” He tried to sound angry, but his voice hitched. 

Gerard nodded, feeling like his head was full of cotton. He couldn’t think about Frank being gone, too, no matter what he’d said. He didn’t want him dead. Couldn’t bear the thought of it. 

“I think we should track him,” Ray said. “He fought the demon for a little while; maybe we can catch him and help him take back control.”

There were so many holes in that plan, and he had to know it. “What–" Gerard started, but his voice didn’t work. He tried again. “What then?”

Ray blinked.

“What then, Ray?” Gerard asked, picking up steam. “You know he can’t hold off that thing forever. Do you want to turn him in so SSS can eat his soul for the greater good?” There was a sick pleasure in speaking so viciously, but it made him feel chest-rotting guilt when Ray flinched. And he looked so devastated Gerard ducked his head and muttered an apology.

“I think…” Ray said, in nothing more than a ragged whisper. “I don’t think he’s gonna survive. I just want to see him again.”

Gerard withered. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, and he didn’t know what he was apologizing for but it seemed like the only thing to say. He didn’t know how everything had gone so wrong. Why everything had suddenly gotten so big. They were kids from Jersey in a rock band saddled with the weight of life and death and a creature that should by all rights not be on Earth. 

Gerard cursed Fate. Let loss wash over him and swallow him whole. Fate. She was supposed to be an impartial force, a dealer in the poker game that was life. If that was true, Gerard and Ray had gotten a shitty hand.

“Let’s track him,” Gerard said, resolute. He squeezed Ray’s hands and felt his heart beating in his ears. “We’ll have to find someone, ‘cause I can’t work magic.” That meant Dr. Ballato, the only other person who knew exactly what was going on. 

It was giving up, in a way. They’d abandoned the path of decisions guided by cold logic, and when given an inch, Gerard’s bleeding heart took a lightyear. He knew it was dangerous, that it could cost him his life to get close to Frank and the demon again, but he didn’t much care. But… he was thinking again, shocked back to half-life with the promise of a plan. _Why?_

“Hm?” Ray hummed. Gerard must have spoken out loud.

“Why was the demon targeting us? Mikey? If it was really out to kill as much as possible, wouldn’t there be more bodies?”

Ray’s brow wrinkled. Stress and grief had aged him what seemed like a thousand years. “I don’t know. Maybe Ballato will?”

Gerard filed the question away for later, and by silent agreement he and Ray started packing up the few things they’d taken out of their bags. They wouldn’t be needing the motel room tonight. 

***

Gerard called Dr. Ballato on a payphone outside, after Ray wheedled the front desk into giving him their money back for the room. He had a knack for remembering phone numbers. Frank always used to joke that the ability was transmitted via osmosis from Brian. Gerard had already decided to leave Brian out of this. He was as safe as he could get, down in California. Dragging him back to Jersey would be a death sentence.

Cop shows didn’t tell him if payphones were untraceable or not, but remembered it didn’t matter, since they’d run for no reason. They could have stayed. Stayed with Mikey… 

“New Jersey Magical Ailments Clinic, how can I help you?”

Gerard swallowed, forced himself to speak clearly. “I need to speak with Dr. Lindsey Ballato,” he said. Ray leaned closer where he was propping the door open to hear what was going on.

“Your name?” The receptionist asked. Gerard was just about to give it, but then he remembered the news. They would recognize the name Way, not as a murder suspect but as a contact. They could defer him to the police, or worse, SSS. Thinking fast, he said, “Frank Iero. I was there a few days ago.”

The sound of shuffling papers, files being opened and leafed through. “You were the one who left in a hurry,” she said. “Had somewhere to be?”

Gerard’s heart twisted. “Something like that.”

“I’ll put you through to the doctor,” the receptionist said, and Gerard took the time of the transition to release a small, choked noise from the back of his throat.

“Dr. Lindsey Ballato,” Her voice was clipped and professional on her name, but slipped when she said, “Frank Iero?”

“No,” Gerard blurted. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t let them know I could be contacted.”

“Oh my God, Gerard. Where are you?” She sounded like she wanted to say more, but waited for him to answer.

“Still Jersey. Somewhere near Freehold,” he said. “It’s just me and Ray. Can we meet somewhere? I– we, need a favor.”

“I can't say much here,” she said. “Meet me at your favorite coffee shop. I’m off in two hours.” She hesitated. "Bye, Gerard." She hung up and so did he, already calculating if they had enough gas to get them back to the opposite state line. 

They’d been driving aimlessly before, but now that they had a destination Ray unfolded a map out of the glove compartment, creasing edges where he didn’t need to read. Gerard turned the key in the ignition, then pain split from the base of his head to his temples, like Fate’s fish hook caught underneath the plating of his skull. He didn't even need to think. He looked in the rear view mirror and braced himself for a vision.


	9. It Goes On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing to say for myself in terms of update schedule BUT the chapter is here. It's a bit of a whopper. It is also here I remind you that it is always darkest before the dawn x
> 
> Beta read by the crepuscular and crispy Rhianne

It was like trying to drop a needle on a spinning record while blindfolded. Sometimes it would land and the picture would be clear, but other times it would scratch and distort, play snippets at a time. Gerard saw a clock without a twelve. Then something he couldn’t make sense of, like empty space folding over itself, then _Mikey Mikey Mikey,_ ephemeral and smiling. The mirror cleared and Gerard wiped his stinging eyes. Ray handed over his bag, and Gerard went through the mechanical movements of shaking a capsule out of the pill bottle and swallowing. He shoved the bottle deep into his bag, under the shirts and stage clothes and broken, blood-colored makeup. If he couldn’t see it, he couldn’t be tempted. He told himself. 

“You can’t drive on Spectrafin,” Ray said, unbuckling his seatbelt. He was too nonchalant. “Scoot over. What did you see?”

“Mikey,” he said. He felt like the clock was significant, but nothing was as important as seeing his brother again. 

Ray’s composure fell apart. “What? What was he doing? Was he okay?”

“He just smiled,” Gerard said, feeling hollow. He wished he could tattoo the image of it on the insides of his eyelids, he was so starved for the sight of Mikey. “I think he was okay.”

“Anything about Frank?”

Gerard shook his head. He surrendered the driver’s seat to Ray because he wasn’t supposed to be operating heavy machinery, and even now Ray wouldn’t take no for an answer. All the way back to meet Dr. Ballato, Gerard wrung his hands. He picked at his cuticles until they bled as he thought about his brothers. 

***

Ray had started driving through puddles twenty minutes ago, and a thin mist of rain hung in the air. He parked the van far away and he and Gerard walked to The Alchemist, his favorite coffee place in Jersey. It had been there since the dawn of time, it seemed. Owned by this old, witch-blooded guy who’d had his sights set on something bigger. Gerard pulled his hood up over his head but was soaked within a minute. He felt heavy, like he’d have to wring himself out on the doorstep. 

Few people were out in the gloom, and even fewer were inside the shop: one employee, a man playing chess with no partner, and the witch doctor in a red raincoat. She’d bought two extra mugs of coffee. 

“Hey, boys,” she said. Gerard could have known it was her with his eyes closed. He concentrated for a moment, because his head was still misty from the Spectrafin, and felt the steady warmth of magic turned medical, along with something else. The icy snap of warding. She must have been more scared than she let on. God knew Gerard would have put up protective magic around himself and Ray if he had the ability.

“Coffee’s on me,” Dr. Ballato said. “Sit.”

Gerard sat, pulling down his hood and scooping his wet hair off his forehead. Ray took the chair beside him. “Thanks for meeting us, Doc,” he said.

“Call me Lindsey,” she said, with a small smile. “Caffeinate. Tell me about this favor.” She drummed her short nails on her coffee mug with a look that was a little too knowing. Gerard had known she wouldn’t ask directly about Mikey—she was too considerate—but what she said next was loaded with implication. “No promises, though.” 

Ray was the one who spoke, talking about how he thought it worth the risk to come back, and that SSS was more likely to annihilate Frank than save him. He asked if she could track Frank, and why it hadn’t taken any more victims. 

Lindsey steepled her fingers. “You’re asking if I can track him for you?”

Gerard nodded. “I figured you could do it, even though you specialize in medical magic.” He took a sip of coffee—extra black, touch of sugar. It tasted good, but he barely had cause to enjoy it. It reminded him of peace offerings from Frank and late nights with Mikey, copies of _Watchmen_ illuminated by the cabin light in the van. 

“That’s… a more reasonable favor than I thought,” Lindsey said. “I can manage a tracking spell.”

Gerard’s voice was hushed when he said, “I wouldn’t ask you to bring him back.” He felt if he said it any louder the lie would be visible. He would have, and it would have been a one-way trip. If Ray hadn’t been with him like a tether to shore he would have floated off to sea, sank to the bottom.

“As for the demon,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it. It’s going after people who know what it is. For some reason, it wants to fly under the radar.” 

Two things clicked in Gerard’s head. That was why Lindsey was wearing the magical equivalent of a bulletproof vest—to protect herself if Frank came searching. Stupid. _Stupid._ He should have known once Frank—the real one—said the demon was going to kill any witnesses. 

Ray cursed. “We put you in danger,” he said. His grip was white-knuckled around his coffee mug. 

“No,” she said, startling in her conviction. “The only one we have to blame for this is Fate.” 

Gerard thought about his vision. About Mikey’s smiling face. His shitty hand of cards. “I still wish it was different,” he said.

“Don’t make me quote Gandalf at you,” Lindsey said. Gerard almost smiled. “You’re sure about tracking Frank?”

“Yes,” Gerard said, taking a fortifying gulp of coffee.

“Then I’ll need your lighter,” she said. “And something of Frank’s.”

“Would his guitar work?” Ray asked.

“I need something I can burn. More like a pick.”

They left their coffee cups half full on the table, too restless to finish them. Out into the rain starting to fall in fat drops like tears. Every so often a drop would sizzle as it fell on Lindsey, superheated into steam by her wards. In comparison, Gerard felt exposed. He thought about how little it would take to kill him or Ray. The silence grew stilted.

“Did you draw those wards?” Gerard asked in a way that he hoped sounded nonchalant. They splashed across the street with Ray leading the way.

Lindsey shook her head. “That’s too far beyond diagnosing curses. A friend did them for me. I’d ask him to help, but he’s on a flight to France.”

Gerard shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. It was no use to feel disappointed, because Lindsey was a great witch and an even better doctor. Although it was like their connections were being severed one by one. The feeling threatened to crush him—that they were on their own.

At the van, Ray scooped up the handful of guitar picks he and Frank kept in the backseat cupholder. He thumbed through them, holding each to the cabin light. 

“Any one of those will work,” Lindsey said. 

“I’m seeing if there’s one with his blood on it,” Ray said. “From that time he cut his hand.”

Gerard remembered that show. It hadn’t been more than two weeks ago, but it had already become a distant memory, like those of Brian’s exasperated looks and crashing restaurants at one in the morning. Frank had been shredding like a motherfucker and smeared his blood on Gerard’s face, for some reason. Crowd went nuts. Gerard had thought it was hardcore. Now the thought made him queasy. 

He’d thought about Brian, all the way down in California. Gerard had already made the decision to leave him out of this. To tell him what was happening would be to condemn him, and there was already too much blood on Gerard’s hands, the knees of his jeans. It wasn’t about winning anymore, more like mitigating casualties.

Ray handed over a pick. “This one should work,” he said. “Do you need anything else?”

“This should cut it,” Lindsey said, but she hesitated, turning the pick over between her fingers.

Gerard was tempted to ask or say something, but he restrained himself to an expectant look. 

Lindsey sighed. “Boys,” she said. “Do you know how tracking spells work?”

“You burn a piece or possession of someone and your second sight shows you where they are?” Ray offered.

“Good,” Lindsey said. “But… it only works if the person I’m tracking wants to be found.”

Gerard felt something deflate in his chest cavity. “And if they don’t?”

“Spell doesn’t work,” Lindsey said. She straightened up. “No harm in trying, though.”

Inside his head, Gerard argued that there was indeed harm in trying. There was a lot of fucking harm. False hope, disappointment, loss. Another absence at his side, right next to the void Mikey left. Something made him keep his mouth shut, though. Some little misplaced hope that was unkillable—the pesky cockroach crawling out from a rock after the A-bomb.

“Yeah,” he said. Lindsey looked at and through him like she always did, for a second seeing the desolation inside him. The longing for two lost brothers a hair’s breadth out of his reach.

“It goes on, Gerard,” she said. Then withdrew and spoke like a doctor, rather than a friend. “Once I do this I’m going to go vacant for a few seconds; don’t panic.”

“Vacant?” Ray asked. 

“More like…” Lindsey passed a hand over her own eyes. “Gone. I’ll stand here, but I’ll be unresponsive. This is just me telling you I’ll come back.” Then without ceremony, she held the guitar pick in her open palm and touched the flame of Gerard’s lighter to it. It caught despite the rain, and Gerard prayed to nothing in particular that Frank wanted to be found. That there was enough left of him to want anything at all. 

Lindsey’s eyes glassed over, and the flame in her hand flared brighter. Gerard counted the seconds. Halfway through five she blinked twice, the flame fizzled out, and she dropped a handful of ash on the pavement. It was a simple spell after all. Nothing that required phosphorous and blue flame or elaborate circles. 

“Did it work?” Ray was so tense he was balancing on the balls of his feet, like he was ready to take flight. 

“He’s close,” Lindsey said. Gerard’s breath left him in a rush. “The lot off Genesis Drive. He’s in the warehouse.”

So he _did_ want to be found. Frank was still there, still alive, still substantial enough to fight and think of his friends. Gerard thought of the lot off Genesis Drive. Thought of Mikey and sneaking away after church in eighth grade, standing in the shadow of the warehouse grinding Gerard’s cigarette out under his heel. _Those things’ll kill you._ And then it was like the fear drained out of him, which was certifiable—had to be. He was about to face down a demon. Ask for Frank like he was talking in a landline and the dark force from the pits of hell was the operator. 

“Let’s go, then,” Gerard said, with a manic sort of determination. Then his brain caught up with him. “You and me, Ray.” He wouldn’t drag Lindsey into this further. He’d already signed her death certificate by bringing Frank to the clinic. “Lindsey, I won’t make you do anything else for us. You can skip town. Disappear. Do whatever you need to do.”

She dipped her head in a single nod. “I’d go with you, you know.”

“I can’t let you do that,” Gerard said. Another connection lost, but he couldn’t bring himself to be sorry. He only felt relief that whatever happened in the warehouse it would be his and Ray’s to deal with alone. 

“Well, then,” Lindsey said. She straightened her raincoat and said primly, “May Fate bring us together again.” Without another word, she kissed Ray on the cheek, then Gerard, and walked away into the rain. 

“You driving?” Ray asked. 

***

Ray felt like he was riding to his death. It was rather uneventful. If this was one of Gerard’s comic strips they would have been on motorcycles at least, an homage to the four horsemen, preferably with the Metallica song playing in the background. Except there were only two of them now. Instead Gerard went just five over the speed limit and turned on to Genesis Drive. He parked the van.

Ray didn’t know how to feel. He couldn’t feel much of anything, if he was honest. He was following Gerard and his deathwish because Gerard was always the one crazy enough to go through with an idea. He wanted to see Frank again. That was what he knew. The danger seemed worth it to Ray, and he wondered if he was the one with the deathwish.

Gerard killed the engine. “Once more unto the breach,” he said, then laughed, humorless. It went on for longer than it should have. “We’re going crazy, Ray,” he crowed. “It’s _folie a deux_. I don’t even know if I’m scared to die.”

“Who said anything about dying?” Ray asked, with stupid, stupid optimism he didn’t feel. Of course they were talking about dying. There was a demon out for their blood. It wasn’t so much an _if_ but a _when_ either of them were going to bite it. And… was he scared? 

Gerard got out of the van and Ray followed, traipsing through dead grass that clung to his damp jeans with dew. There were no people outside except for those which were driving away in a pickup truck. Something told Ray they would be undisturbed.

On the shadowy side of the building there were a number of entrances. All padlocked except for one, which looked like it had been melted by a blowtorch. Ray pointed, and Gerard went first to push the door open. It swung on oiled hinges into red-misted darkness. By silent agreement they stepped inside, and Gerard’s nose started dripping blood. Ray reached for his hand as the door swung shut behind them. 

The red light was emergency lighting, Ray realized, leaking dim from bulbs above doorways and massive stacked shelves of boxes and pallets. Everything was arranged in neat, straight rows, but that didn’t stop the shadows from curving inwards, up and overhead through the warning mist of carmine. Ray wondered if he should call for Frank. He was here. Gerard bleeding was enough evidence of that.

Then something strange happened. It was like Fate herself had reached inside Ray’s head, tied two loose ends of uncertainty together into a cord of tight resignation. The next instant when something collided with his side, part of him wasn’t even surprised. 

***

Gerard screamed as Ray was torn from him, half from surprise and half from pain. His temples exploded like they’d been stabbed through with an ice pick, and his vision went white as he fell to one knee. 

“Ray!” _Fuck, fuck, fuck,_ he couldn’t see. There was blood pooling in his eyes and in a moment of clarity he knew he had to follow the pain. Had to get to Ray and Frank. It was the demon. The demon had dragged him off into the red shadows. Nothing else would have made his head feel like it was about to explode, like his eyeballs were boiling. 

Gerard forced himself to stand. He made himself run towards Frank until the bones of his skull were on fire. He trudged when he couldn’t run, and listened. For the sound of a scalpel tearing flesh. But people died quietly. It was the killers who made the noise. 

The raw power in the air twisted like a living thing, then suddenly muted, like it had been trapped behind a wall of plexiglass. Gerard sucked in a breath and nearly choked on his own blood. Ray. 

Then there came an agonized wail. 

It was something that started out as a babbling, panting scream. Something that jerked and hitched upward in pitch. A breath of human misery that made Gerard want to cover his ears and scream right along with it. 

It was Frank. That sound had come from him.

“Frank,” he said. Then he couldn’t stop saying it. “Frank! Frank!” Gerard staggered past stacks of boxes until the plexiglass ache drummed in the pit of his gut and brain. And there was Frank, kneeling on the concrete floor next to Ray’s prone body. Ray’s… Ray. Ray… not his body. Not him. Because it couldn’t be him. With his throat cut into a smile.

“Gerard,” Frank said. Gerard managed a step before his legs gave out. His feet slipped in the gore. Ray’s open eyes were starless and unseeing.

Oh God, oh Fate. There was so much blood without a creek to wash it away.

“No, no, no no no, go _away_.” Frank clutched his head and moaned as the demon’s power surged and boiled. Then quieted as it was restrained. 

Frank looked like the walking dead. His hair hung in wet strings where he clutched at it with bloody hands. Twisting, tugging. How had they been brought this low? Kneeling in a puddle of gore spilled from Ray’s veins as his vacant body cooled.

For a moment he hated Frank. Hated that his face was the last Ray and Mikey saw and that he was wielding the scalpel. But as he watched Frank wrap his arms around himself, doubled over with the weight of guilt pressing down on him, the feeling fled. None of this was Frank’s fault, but he was fighting like it was. Shaking with the effort of keeping the demon at bay.

“Got what you wanted, didn’t you, you _fuck._ ” Frank was speaking, but not to Gerard. “M’ best friend's done in and dead and… Ray-” He looked down at his own hands as his voice took on a tortured rasp. “I killed him.”

Frank whirled. He grabbed Gerard by the arms with a bruising grip. It was so sudden Gerard thought the demon had won control again. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the bite of the scalpel blade. When it didn’t come and Frank shook him, still babbling almost-words, he looked. Frank’s eyes were manic, his face was bloody, and Gerard thought that both of them might be dying. “Gee,” he said. “No time. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Gerard couldn’t speak. Frank’s tongue tripped over itself.

“You have to… you gotta-” Frank’s hands were shaking as he pressed cold metal into Gerard’s limp palm. Scalpel. Gummy blood. His hand closed. “Kill me.”

The demon roared and Gerard felt blood spurt from his nose and fill the back of his throat. He was sick with the smell of it. And Frank. Frank wanted him to-

“No.”

“Gee, _please_. It’ll hurt the demon and you and Mikey can be safe.”

“Mikey’s gone, Frank. I’m the only one left.”

Frank choked. “God, oh fuck, Gerard.” He tore at his hair, stringing it through with the red on his hands.

Gerard was drowning in blood. The burn and itch of it on his skin, peeling away what made him human, ate away at his ability to perceive reality. 

“I want out, Gee.” Frank’s eyes fixed on Ray’s prone body. “Everything went wrong.”

Gerard wanted to tell him to fight, to hang on, but to what end? A bloody one, most likely. One where both of them ended up like Ray—twisted on the floor, shadows on his face made incarnadine. He couldn’t handle more death, but the scalpel was sticky in his hand, impossible to let go of. He thought about what it would be like to kill another person. He thought about beyond the veil. If Mikey was there, solidifying as a Class Three, or if he was _gone_ gone.

“I can’t do it, Frankie,” he said. The scalpel fell from his hand as he gathered the shreds of himself. He was not a killer. And there was that incessant hope, deep inside like phantom warmth Arctic explorers experienced just before freezing to death. He was small in this game of Fate. Frank, on the other hand…

“It’s not over,” Gerard said. Maybe it was the witch blood in him, this inane sense that there was something still to be done, that something must go on. The pain in his head thudded like an artillery cannon. “Fate willing, it’s not over.” 

“It’s not over,” Frank echoed. Then their time was up, as a titanic surge of energy made blood spurt in the back of Gerard’s throat, the seams of his cranium blazed with agony and he crumpled. As he fell he reached for Ray, and joined him after the fatal slice of a scalpel. 

On and beyond, with no end in sight.


	10. Deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you heard the news? MCR is back from the dead and so am I. Enjoy this Halloween update and get excited for a lot more story to come x
> 
> Natileroxs, thanks for your comments and your patience x
> 
> Whyyyyyyyyyyy, thank you for your comment x

Frank had never had the misfortune of sharing a room with someone he didn't know. He'd spent weeks at a time cooped up in the van, sleeping with his head on Ray's lap and feet in Gerard's, been crammed in motel rooms with them. The constant bumping elbows only made bearable by the fact that they were brothers in everything except blood.

And now he had a roommate in his own body, so to speak. He would have happily lived a thousand years in the van amongst the fast food wrappers and empty cans of air freshener if it meant being alone in his own head again.

Frank lost time after talking to Gerard, and a claw for control later he was standing in an open field in clothes caked with blood. That was the kind of thing that made the public ask questions, believe it or not. He staggered for cover into a maintenance alley. Letting loose a stream of curses, he folded himself into a crouch in the hulking shadow of a Dumpster.

The demon railed inside his head, blotting out coherency like an ink stain. Frank couldn’t think with all of his resources devoted to keeping his limbs under his own control. But he needed brainpower if he was going to figure out his next move. It wasn’t over. Gerard’s words stuck close to his heart, because there was something he could do. He just needed to fucking think of it. His head was conflict and clashing colors. 

If he turned his attention inward to the demon’s rage, trying to seep into the cracks, fissures of his skull cavity, it felt like walking closer to the edge of a cliff. But it was necessary. This demon was a parasite, but it was damn smart. If Frank wanted leverage he’d have to talk to it.

It wasn’t like it had nothing to say. It had been chattering since Frank was enough to hear it. Not in English, because if he remembered anything from his high school history class it was that Hell had been sealed since the dark ages.

Hell had been sealed since the dark ages. 

He knew as soon as he had the thought the demon heard it, felt it, whatever. It shoved him under, tried to squash the following explosion of an idea into the churning black of his subconscious—no, sleep, forget. Like hell he wouldn’t. He threw himself into the fight. It was his fucking head, did the demon think he was just going to roll over and die? He'd wanted to. Selfishly wanted to make Gerard just kill him and end it, but that time was passed. It goes on, and this was not over.

Frank let himself go deep. Dip into the well of rage that had gotten him into more trouble than out of it. Gotten him into this mess in the first place. If he hadn’t gone and got pissed and left back at that motel, none of this would have happened. He was putting things right. Because his friends’ blood was on his hands, he had to take back control. For good. And he was the only one left to do it.

He felt like he was drawn out into strings, thready in defense of his mind. It was his goal that kept him going, that gave him this undiluted focus and concentrated willpower. If he could leave home to join a rock band at seventeen years old and make it out alive, he could do this. Easy. 

The moment the demon’s defenses buckled was a snap of tension like a breaking rubber band. Frank saw his chance, and he attacked. The demon shrieked and writhed, and Frank felt it trying to extend tendrils of temptation. Stupid. He could feel the echoes of the manipulation before they started, and pushed them away, keeping a tight hold on those morals he kept so close to his heart.

Then he had it. With one final, desperate claw he flung the demon to the furthest reaches of his mind, then felt like he was being slammed back into his body at sixty miles an hour. The sun was too bright even in the shade, it ached to breathe, and his ankle was throbbing something terrible. But with the pain came the most clarity he’d felt in days. Halle-fucking-lujah, he could think.

He liked his chances of talking now. _Listen here, you son of a bitch,_ seemed like a good place to start. Get the ball rolling, even if the demon didn't understand the words.

Frank sat down on the pavement, noting the blood crusted and dry on his shoes. So carefully he reached out to gauge the demon’s response. It was furious, but Frank didn’t let it touch him. Not again. Just read the aftershocks of archaic thought: _I own you, set me free,_ whatever. That wasn't what he was interested in.

It was an odd, primal kind of communication through a language barrier. Frank and the demon speared thoughts at each other until the message was clear, communicated in feelings and immaterial ideas. Thought Pictionary.

In no uncertain terms, Frank was a moron for not thinking of this sooner. Albeit that the enchantments holding the gates of Hell closed were weakening, they still prevented breaches. Escapes. This demon had to have found a crack, a chink in the armor, wiggled it's slimy ass through. Why wasn't important, although Frank wondered. Hell was demon city; why would one want to come to earth to get drained by Shade Special Services?

But that didn't matter. SSS, on the other hand, did. The elusive shades were soul eaters, almost human but not quite. They lived for hundreds of years and looked like dudes who'd been stretched in a taffy puller—all limbs. You never saw the face of an SSS agent. A shade was the only thing a Class One or a demon had cause to be afraid of.

The final detail made it all come together. When something left Hell, it left a vacuum. A void that had to be filled with any number of recently dead souls. Dollars to goddamn donuts Mikey, Ray, and Gerard had sailed through the breach and into the Pit to equalize the soul count.

Frank's deal boiled down to this: Take me to Hell the same way you got there, or I march you straight to SSS to be drained into a spirit with barely enough juice to power a lightbulb.

The demon took the deal.

***

Frank found he could barely walk when he stood up to pick his way out of the alley. He stayed in the shadows, and eventually peeled off his bloody socks and tossed them in a dumpster, relacing his shoe tight around his swollen ankle. He rolled up the red, crusted hems of his jeans and turned his jacket inside out. The only reason he didn’t let the guilt, creeping agony, get to him was because it made him weak to whatever the demon was doing to try to wrestle back control. He’d feel it later; right now he had shit to do. And getting the cops called on him for being covered in blood would be fucking inconvenient. 

He deserved it though, deserved the electric chair for what he did. _The Green Mile_ style—dry sponge.

No one in their right mind would take him if he tried to hitchhike to where the demon was reluctantly leading him. His evil little compass. He concentrated on getting to the road anyway, and when he found the van parked on the curb he almost cried and couldn't say exactly why. Ray and Gerard, fucking saints. They'd even left the keys in the overhead CD compartment. They couldn't exactly fit with all the Morissey and Bowie crammed there within an inch of its life. Frank didn't think about it too much, otherwise the fondness of the memory would knife him in the gut.

Instead he got in the driver’s seat and throttled the ignition. He was reluctant to give the demon an inch, but it was a necessary risk. He needed direction. Half-expecting the demon to lash out at him, he was suspiciously surprised it ceded information and nothing else. Its roiling depths were folded away, clandestine. It made Frank uneasy. 

The demon took him to the state lines. Which made sense. It was only a few miles away from that little podunk town where everything started. He was just glad he didn’t run out of gas. The drive was short and tense, and he had to shape chords on the steering wheel to give his jangling nerves an outlet.

He stopped on a dirt road in front of an old church. The van was running on fumes, and he killed the engine. The church was homely, weathered and stout and only just falling into disrepair. It was one of those one-room numbers with a graveyard fenced in behind it, structure and bodies alike being absorbed by the earth. It was in one of those places where being there felt like standing in a dry riverbed after the water had changed course. People had been here but moved on to greener pastures; it was a borderline ghost town. As soon as Frank stepped out of the van and into silence he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. 

“Atmospheric,” he commented to the stagnant air, and closed the door. The demon was writhing with revulsion. Frank let it squirm.

 _Consecrated ground, or something?_ Frank asked with a thought. _I thought churches haven’t been actually consecrated in forever._

He was pretty sure the demon called him an idiot, in whatever archaic language it spit words in. It fell back on thought Pictionary, and Frank saw in his mind’s eye wards like steel traps, ancient power that cut and shielded. He felt an echo of psychic pain so profound it almost brought him to his knees, like the hollow, bass thud of a shockwave. On instinct he shielded, shoved the demon back, but it was already retreating. It took Frank a moment to realize it was the demon's memory of escape, of fighting through the chink in the barrier.

For the first time he truly understood the magnitude of the magic that held the gates of Hell shut. It fucking floored him. Something would have to be truly desperate to endure the pain of breaking through a weak spot and clawing its way back to earth. He couldn't for the life of him figure out why. Aside from curiosity he couldn’t imagine a reason why something would want to endure all that pain to break out. Curiosity didn’t motivate you to endure a thousand psychic needles. Love for your brothers did, though. Frank would have to be ready for the agony that would undoubtedly work on both sides of the passage.

It gave him a perverse pleasure, knowing the demon had suffered. Frank ached to lash out at it, to attack and make it suffer for what it used him to do. What he was weak enough to allow it to do. It deserved Gerard, Mikey, and Ray's slit throats. But Frank wouldn't start a fight that would jeopardize his plan. It was too important. The only thing he could hope to do was take the demon with him when he fell through the veil. Drive the agony of passage through it again.

To the graveyard he went, past the steeple and the leaning cross. He hurdled the fence before he could think about his injuries and their consequences. He gasped in pain when he hiked his legs up to fling himself over the pickets. Then landed hard on his knee like an idiot. If Mikey was here he’d be doubled over in laughter. As it was Frank let out a pitiful little curse and peeled himself up off the dirt. 

The demon grew even more edgy, and a tinnitus started in Frank’s ears as soon as he stood up. He wanted to lace his shoe tighter to support his ankle, but he didn't want to kneel here. It felt too much like letting his guard down. Because these headstones… oh, it wasn’t right. Instead of being orderly rowed, the graves were arranged in concentric circles. Like the goddamn Pet Sematary. They faced the middle of the churchyard like overseers of a ritual. Frank was short of breath, and his skin felt three sizes too small. Shrinking over his skeleton.

He hardly needed the demon’s direction to know his passage to Hell was in the center of the stones. He was reluctant, and if he was honest, terrified. Everything around the center of the graveyard seemed to bend towards the center point—the surrounding trees, the fence posts, even the cross atop the steeple.

The demon twisted in discomfort, pushing Frank to get on with it. Take his end of the bargain already. He stepped forward barely of his own accord, past a headstone reading Richard Moore. When he turned back around he could have sworn it had changed to O'Brien. His vision tunneled.

He wanted nothing more than to retrieve his friends’ souls. He was set, jaw clenched and ready to suffer a thousand times for what he'd done with that scalpel. It wasn't a time for hesitation, so he didn't pause as he limped in the direction the magnetism of old magic was pulling him. 

As soon as he stepped into the centermost circle, Frank’s body and soul resonated like dissonant chords. He felt as though everything inside him was shifted half an inch to the left. He had to do this part fast, otherwise he felt like his bones would liquefy. It was a fast, instinctive movement of his consciousness to dive towards the thinning between realities. Another to latch onto the demon and drag it down with him. No way he was leaving that thing alone with his body. Then all he had to do was fall.


	11. Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my lovely ghouls. 
> 
> Long time no see. When I started writing this fic I never expected to see the day when MCR was more active on the internet than me, but I guess miracles happen every day. Basically, I haven't updated in so long because poor mental health vibe checked my ass into next week, and all my creative pursuits, including this story, came to a screeching halt. That is my excuse, and this is my promise to keep updating this thing and see it through till the end. It may take years, but goddamn if I'm gonna do it. I also have some other fun stuff in the works: short pieces n such. So the 2.3 of you who read my fics (I love you) can be on the lookout for those. 
> 
> I made a [tumblr](https://doctorgraves.tumblr.com) too if you guys are interested in following my shenanigans over there x

Gerard had told Frank about his second sight, once upon a time, one sleepless night cramped in the back of the van. He described it as having another pair of eyes, or a film like a nictitating membrane over his vision. Soul-vision, or something. He said if he thought about it, really got Zen, he could start picking out other senses, not just vision. He could almost disconnect his soul from his body. He said it felt like the thud of a bass guitar through an amp when you set your hand on it. Frank tried to imagine it at the time and concluded it would feel weird, but not quite unpleasant.

Frank had been more than a little drunk at the time, which was probably why he’d underestimated the terrible feeling of his soul and his body separating. He felt like he was being ripped from his body like a strip of velcro. If he had the ability he would have gagged. 

He wasn’t so much a person but a wavelength of intent, poking around trying to find the weak spot while the demon cursed him and tried to pull away. The closer he got he heard… something. Like the whine of an electric guitar if you flattened the strings over the pickups. He dragged along the barrier of magic that felt like an electric cinder block wall. Then without warning, he felt the snap and give of the intense wards. The scar was red, like a wound, and beyond it the whining amp sound was louder. He asked the demon what made the sound, but it wouldn’t answer. 

He wondered why there weren’t more things coming through the gap. This question the demon answered. The chink was small. Fucking microscopic. Barely able to fit something the magnitude of a human soul through. The contortion the demon would have had to undergo to fit itself through was extraordinary. The only reason it had been able to fit was that it was a small fry, Frank realized. The fact that something so small could wreak so much havoc made Frank glad the gates were sealed. He’d be a damn crazy activist for their repair once he got back, writing a letter to his representatives, the whole nine yards.

He barely hesitated before taking the plunge. Just long enough to make sure the demon was coming with him. Agony knifed through him as the flayed edges of the barrier tried to drive him away. He and the demon screamed in unison. For the first time in what felt like years, Frank was entirely himself. The effort of enduring the pain consumed the demon entirely, and it abandoned its fight with Frank. 

He didn’t know how he made it. Through grit and undiluted human stubbornness he made it and stayed conscious the whole time. The blissful end of his pain came when he was spit onto a floor of white stone. It was quiet. 

The floor was such a physical thing that he felt the bite of the stones into his knees. But he didn’t have knees, not really. Or tattooed hands to see splayed across the stone. Yet he was convincing himself they were there, that he retained the form of his body back in the churchyard.

He stood, and his shoes were gone. But the soles of his feet were wet with blood. _Guilty conscience,_ he thought. Probably not a good thing to have in Hell. The floor extended infinitely, into the brightest darkness he’d ever seen. It was rife with twisting things, with activity beyond. 

He was joined by a familiar presence a moment later. 

In Hell, the demon had form, like Frank. It seemed to solidify out of the living darkness. As soon as Frank laid eyes on it fresh hate and fear ran through him. The fucking thing looked like him. It had taken his hair and his hands and the way he stood with his shoulders drawn up. But his arms were too long and his neck jutted forward. He had no nose or teeth.

It reached out once to Frank's mind. It wasn't fighting, so for the first time, Frank saw it as something separate, rather than a tumor stuck to his spinal cord. He felt it's bottomless anger. It was the same as the rage in himself. That middle finger to Fate that burned inside him. Knowing it didn't make him hate the demon less, but it stuck somewhere close to his heart. 

He saw the depth of its loneliness, its desire to be away from Hell. Something that burned so strongly it had spent centuries dragging bloody fingernails along the barrier gates. Waiting for something to give. It would kill to be free, and it had.

Frank understood, finally, why his friends had died. But that didn’t mean he had sympathy for their killer.

The demon withdrew. It pointed with a hand that couldn't decide whether it had five fingers or six, into the living darkness. Frank watched with a cool sense of closure as the demon dissolved into the black.

Frank sighed even though he didn't need to breathe. He reveled in how clear his mind was. Fucking sunshine, if he wasn't in the Pit.

He held out his hand and pressed his fingertips to the place the demon had dissolved into. It felt like a mirror-smooth wall, coalescing under his hand. It hit him then that he had no idea what to do. He was here, and that was how far his momentum took him. Now he’d have to think.

Trapped in Hell’s waiting room, he ran fingers along the wall, glassy like dead eyes. “Mikey,” he said. “Ray, Gerard.” Like he could summon them with the strength of how much he wanted it. He felt for a passageway, but the only one he could feel was the one that would take him back through the ward barrier and into his body. He hoped he wasn’t decomposing or something. That would be gross.

“Hello?” he said. He’d never been too patient. “Can I see a fucking receptionist or something?” He scuffed the bloody sole of his foot against the stone, and it splattered like it was spit from a cut lip. He was getting antsy. He’d normally feel it in sweaty palms and a pounding heart, but since he neither had palms or a heart his soul wavered and hummed. 

“Hello? I’m from the land of the living. Here to collect. My name's Frank Ie-"

A wave of cold stole his last name from his lips. He gasped even though he didn’t need to breathe as something started to solidify in front of him. It didn’t get much further than that, though. Frank could make out clasped hands as if in prayer, a toothy smile. The rest of the thing’s form seemed like… like it was there, just bypassing the part of Frank’s brain that comprehended sight.

“Names are valuable. Wise to not peddle yours to anything that could be listening,” it said.

Frank shut his mouth, cowed in surprise.

“You’ve come searching?”

“Yeah,” Frank said, trying to put his brain back together. “I’m here to get my friends.”

“So I heard. And so did half of Hell.”

“Half of Hell?” Yeah, he screamed in a punk band, but he didn’t think he was loud enough to make most of a dimension hear him. 

“You glow with life and desire. I’m glad I got to you when I did.”

“Who are you?” He probably should have asked that earlier. He had to be careful to not give away too much. It was a goddamn cardinal rule not to give away your full name to anyone who could listen. He owed this thing already for stopping him. That gave him a nasty feeling, even though it didn’t seem like something that would hurt him. 

“In coming years your Gerard will name me Saint Viticus,” the thing said. 

“So… would you mind if I called you Viticus?” Frank asked. He decided to use his best manners. It couldn’t hurt.

Viticus solidified a little, and Frank could make out the shape of a head. He just hoped it didn’t decide to take on Frank’s appearance. “I would not mind,” they said. “It’s nice to have a name.”

“Right,” Frank said. And when Viticus didn’t speak he said, “What now?”

Viticus moved like a breath of wind. “Now, I explain. Walk with me,” they said, and started to drift along the white cobblestones. Frank followed, leaving bloody footprints and staying close.

“I am on orders from Mother Fate,” Viticus said. 

“So you mean you’re interfering,” Frank said before he could stop himself. He regretted it instantly, but Viticus didn’t seem to care. 

“I am on orders,” Viticus repeated. 

“The abstract concept of Fate gave you orders,” Frank said. He made it a statement and tried not to be too biting. Frank wasn’t a non-believer exactly. He lived with a guy who dealt in fate. He just didn’t believe that Fate was an entity. Someone that could give orders and shape reality. Really went against his whole free-will punk manifesto. 

“I am on orders from Mother Fate,” Viticus repeated. Frank wasn’t getting anything else out of them. 

“Okay,” Frank said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and didn’t say anything else.

“Your friends were not supposed to die, and you were not supposed to come looking for them.”

“Tough shit,” Frank said. “Here I am.”

“Indeed,” Viticus said. “Walk with me.”

Frank pointed down at his feet. “Am doing,” he said. The scenery didn’t change; the only indication that he and Viticus had even traveled was the wash of bloody footprints leading into the bright darkness behind them. 

“No,” Viticus said, and extended a hand. “ _Walk_ with me.”

Frank took a step, reluctant to take Viticus’s hand. He left a bloody footprint. 

“You will still be able to get back,” Viticus said. “Walk.”

Frank decided _fuck it, _and took Viticus’s hand. The next step he took was different, like he was actually going somewhere. He felt like something bent around him, and with the next step he took, he _moved_. __

__The scenery changed. Instead of stepping on white cobblestones his feet came in contact with fine, sharp gravel like pulverized glass. They didn’t stop bleeding. He held on to that thread back to his body, feeling it grow longer, but not weaker. He idly wondered about vultures as he watched the dry ground absorb his bloody footprints._ _

__“Look up, Frank,” Viticus said. Frank did. The bright darkness had receded. He was overwhelmed for a second, because this was a place, not some Hell version of a waiting room. The landscape, like a slate gray desert, stretched endlessly into a red blur of a horizon. Something about it was hauntingly familiar, like a song he’d heard a long time ago._ _

__“What do you see?” Viticus asked._ _

__“A desert?” Frank said, lilting it like a question._ _

__Viticus said, “Interesting,” and paused. “Now what do you feel?”_ _

__“There’s something here,” he said. Really accurate, Frankie. He cursed and concentrated harder, extending his soul-o-vision as if he could peer through the fabric of this new reality, tear it apart like tissue paper. He gasped._ _

__“Mikey!” he said, then he was running. His feet skidded on the gravel, and he didn’t know exactly where he was going, only that once he got there he’d have Mikey back and that was all that mattered. He ran for all he was worth._ _

__Then the land in front of him dropped away without warning. A strangled shout tore out of his mouth as he flung himself back to stop his momentum. He fell on his ass and skidded, clawing in the gravel for purchase so he wouldn’t pitch himself off the edge of a suddenly-appearing cliff. He breathed hard because for the life of him he couldn’t shake the habit._ _

__The sheer drop yawned at his heels as if the earth had just been scooped away with a spoon. If he peered over the edge Frank couldn’t see the bottom. He had a strong suspicion there was no bottom. That if he’d kept running and hadn't been able to stop in time he would have skidded over the side and fell forever._ _

__But… Mikey. Where was Mikey?_ _

__Frank called, “Mikey!” down into the void, and it echoed back to him. He was here. Frank could feel it just like how he felt out of place in Hell, the way he felt that one step left and up through diagonal, he could sink his fingers into space like flesh and tear. He kicked his heels, barely feeling the crunch of the gravel he sent spilling over the edge. He felt woozy with vertigo._ _

__Viticus couldn’t technically saunter, since they didn’t have feet to touch the ground, but there was smugness in their glide as they appeared at Frank’s side. "Do you understand?"_ _

__Frank wanted to snap back, say, _Fucking no, I'd appreciate it if you told me,_ but he held his tongue. He was not going to sass the supernatural entity. Not unless they deserved it._ _

__Instead, he scooted back from the edge and used his brain. Or… his disembodied intelligence. Imagine that. In the end, it wasn’t a great leap of logic. Hell was give-and-take; if you wanted something, you had to give something._ _

__“Mikey’s… down there,” he said out loud. He wasn’t sure, but that was the most likely option. “And I have to trade myself for him.”_ _

__“What?” Viticus said. Frank didn’t compute. They looked puzzled._ _

__“What?” Frank asked back. It wasn’t like he was scared. It was less than he deserved. He’d been holding the scalpel; he’d been weak enough to let in the demon in the first place. He deserved to be damned. “It’s how Hell works, right? Soul for a soul.”_ _

__“No,” Viticus said._ _

__Frank blinked. “What?” he said again, feeling maybe a little stupid._ _

__“You’re right, of course, nothing comes without a price, but Mother Fate wants none of you in Hell,” Viticus said, folding long-fingered hands in front of them. Frank glanced down over the drop and felt woozy all over again._ _

__“But… how do I get them back? What do I give?”_ _

__“For each soul you want back, you will have to complete a trial to appease the barrier gates of Hell.”_ _

__“How does that work?”_ _

__“Trust Fate that it does,” Viticus said. “She’s ‘pulled many strings’ as you would say, to right this.” That meant “Shut up and let me finish.” Frank did because he was being respectful. “This is the first, and is also where I leave you.”_ _

__“Wait-” Frank said. He was still sitting in the dirt, so he stood up. “What am I supposed to do?”_ _

__“Complete the trials,” Viticus said. “I am sorry I can’t give more guidance.”_ _

__“Let me guess; Fate forbids it?” Frank asked._ _

__“Yes,” Viticus said._ _

__“Can you at least tell me what the trials are?” Frank asked. It was a long shot, but maybe if he knew what they were the following ones wouldn’t seem as insurmountable as this cliff._ _

__“Trust, brotherhood, and sacrifice,” Viticus said._ _

__“Those are the trials?”_ _

__“Yes,” Viticus said._ _

__“Is that it? Are there more cliffs, or…? Or what? What else is there?”_ _

__Viticus’s next words were almost remorseful. It was the most human Frank had heard them sound. “I cannot tell you more. I wish I could. But you’re capable, Frank, and so strong-willed. You can succeed.”_ _

__Frank was a little taken aback. “Thank you,” he said. Viticus’s image changed for a moment, and it was as if they were holding a human heart in their hands. Frank was struck with the strange beauty of the illusion. It was something Gerard would draw, something he would tape to the wall of the van and poke Frank for ideas about story details when he couldn’t sleep. Frank suddenly missed him so much it hurt._ _

__“Good luck,” Viticus said. “Fate is with you.”_ _

__Frank didn’t feel too sure about that, since he felt pretty goddamn lonely once Viticus vanished like a wisp of smoke. Probably to go guide some other poor misguided soul. Not that Frank was misguided. Oh, no, he had a purpose, alright. He just had to figure out what to make of the trials. _Trust, brotherhood, and sacrifice._ _ _

__He had to assume Viticus had listed them in order, and he ran them through his head in a list. _Trust, brotherhood, and sacrifice._ Trust. Did he have to trust that once he flung himself over the edge of the cliff it would end badly? Did he have to trust that something would catch him?_ _

__He sat down again, swinging his feet over the edge. He felt the space gape underneath the bare soles of his feet and thought about how he had no idea what to do. “Trust,” he said. “Trust.”_ _

__He shouted, “Trust!” and listened for the echo. Somewhere in his head, he knew he had to jump and see what happened. Fling himself over the edge. But… there was no echo. For some reason, that was important. For some reason it made Frank hesitate._ _

__He shouted again because there was no one around to hear and there was something in the back of his mind. “Trust! You said, who put the words in your head?” _Our Lady of Sorrows._ They’d played it at their last show, eons ago. Frank had come up behind Gerard, flung his arms around his neck and screamed into his microphone on “Trade me for an apparition.” He did the same, belting the words to the void. It still didn’t echo. _ _

__Frank kicked his heels against the cliffside and thought. There was no echo. Because this wasn’t Earth. Because he didn’t belong here. And because reality where you didn’t belong was so easy to… to not rip, but _twist.__ _

__He didn’t know how he did it. It was cheating, he was sure, because he wasn’t doing the trial. He was twisting space around himself, and he was heading for Mikey. Because he’d waited long e-fucking-nough. He’d been at the butt end of Fate’s joke and a demon’s pipe dream. He’d killed his best friends and now he needed to make it right. But not on Fate’s terms. He’d do this on his own. Just like how he’d left home and gotten a scorpion tattooed on his neck because some foreseer had a vision about a band that could save your life. Because he was so angry at Fate._ _

__He walked, just like he had to get to this desert. Except he forced the space around him to bend to where he wanted to go. And he wanted to get to Mikey._ _

__He felt the space resist change, but forced it anyway. He tore through it like silk, like flesh, all the while reaching out. He’d become quite intuitive, having a demon in his head and all that. Not Gerard-level intuitive, but definitely more than the average person. He could feel Mikey as he drew nearer. He told himself to keep it together. To not get desperate, but he couldn’t help himself. He was going to get him back. He was going to save Mikey. Right his wrongs._ _

__There are some things humans aren’t built to perceive, and Frank knew where he was in Hell was one of those things. It was solid space, like the white cobbled waiting room, and when he stopped abusing the fabric of spacetime he was surrounded with _Mikey.__ _

__The shock of it almost brought him to his knees. And he was stupidly, ridiculously happy, in a way that made him feel like he’d grabbed a live wire and come alive twice. It was the warm embrace of a friend, Mikey’s one-armed hugs, the smell of fresh coffee, _Watchmen,_ arcade games at truck stops, smothering laughter in quiet rooms when everyone is asleep, how cathartic it felt to cut your hair and watch it fall into a gas station sink._ _

__Frank’s world solidified as he tried to make sense of where he was. He saw Mikey’s soul first because it was the only reason he was here. As a silver orb like a Christmas ornament right within his grasp. He couldn’t believe it, he really couldn’t. It seemed like years ago Mikey was kneeling in the creek bed, and then hours later Frank had woken up with a scalpel in his fist and a bad feeling in his gut. Mikey was here. And that meant Gerard and Ray were close by._ _

__He reached out for Mikey, noticing the silver glow in his fingertips as he did. Closing his fist around the glowing ball seemed awfully impolite, so with an outstretched E.T. finger, he touched it. He showed him the way along the thread back to the physical world. Then Mikey moved through him, hitting him square in the chest, and was gone._ _

__Immediately, the walls around Frank, haphazardly built of white stone, started to scream. It sounded like tearing steel and rattled through his entire being. “Shit!” he said, and without further ado clawed his way back through the path he’d torn for himself. But there was no relief. Space pressed in around him in sixty-six tones of resistance. The thread leading back to his body started up an ache, a pull like a fishhook trying to drag him back to the surface._ _

__Hell if he was going to go; he had a job to finish. Even if the very fabric of Hell was trying to spit him out. Whatever. The machinations of Fate would have to try harder than that to make him go away._ _

__Ray was next because that was the order. It was harder without Viticus as a guide, but Frank managed because he always did. For the first time, he let himself hope that everything was going to be fine. Mikey was back up on the surface. Frank didn’t know where he’d be—if his soul was shoved back in his body wherever the paramedics on the murder scene had taken it. Maybe he would be up in the graveyard with circular stones, waiting for him when he got back._ _

__As soon as he got to Ray, showed him the way, the realm screeched again and Frank shriveled in discomfort. Fuck, okay. He had to get out fast. He told Ray, steadiness and light, “See you soon,” as he went. He only felt a little corny about it afterward._ _

__The pain started when he went for Gerard. Like crossing through the barrier gates again, it shredded at his soul and he knew he didn’t have long before something interfered. Before Hell either spit him out or sent mercenaries hunting for his mortal flesh. Although it would be pretty metal, it wasn’t what he needed right now._ _

__Gerard’s soul was almost the same color as Mikey’s, less gold than Ray’s. Frank was flickering as he reached out and said, “Hey, Gee. Time to go,” and touched the glowing orb. Then, like he’d followed them here, Frank followed his friends back up to the surface. Space screamed and bent around him, and even though he was going back home, he had the feeling that he’d messed up. That circumventing the trials had put something in motion that escaping Hell wouldn’t fix._ _


	12. Morgue Raider

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to make these chapters a little longer, and get off my ass to write. Let's see how long that lasts fff
> 
> lifeisverylong, my darling, thank you for commenting, it means more to me than you'll ever know x

Back on earth, up from Hell, Mikey’s neck hurt. 

He woke up slowly, not willing to open his eyes just quite yet. He felt like he’d been asleep for a long time, uncomfortably on his back. In no uncertain terms, his ass was numb, his neck was stiff, and he was freezing. A shiver skated over his skin, and he opened his eyes to darkness. 

He tried to cough the dryness out of his throat, and it kind of worked. Even though he still felt thirsty and a little bit like he’d been hit by a truck. 

He sat up, and before he could get even six inches he hit his head on something metal. The impact rattled his teeth, and he lay back down, cursing. And maybe, just maybe, starting to panic a little bit. He reached up, pressing his flat hands up to whatever he’d hit his head on. It was so dark he couldn’t see them in front of his face as they flattened on cold steel.

“Okay,” he said, in a high, reedy voice. He breathed. In and out. He told himself to chill out because getting scared wouldn’t do him any good. And he tried his best to channel Uma Thurman from that one _Kill Bill_ scene. Did she panic when she woke up in a coffin? No. She kicked ass. 

“You’re gonna kick ass, Mikey,” he said, then felt stupid for saying that out loud. His voice echoed strangely.

Mikey pointed his toes. They were bare and so cold he could barely feel them as they pressed against cool steel. Above his head: steel. At his sides: steel. The frigid and clammy press of a tight space, in which the only thing warm was his breath. And… he wasn’t wearing clothes. A linen sheet was draped over him. 

Memories rushed back into his head in stabbing fragments: the silver glint of a scalpel blade, Frank’s face twisted in agony, then pain like he’d never felt before as he was ripped from his body and dragged somewhere dark, where he knew he wasn’t supposed to be. And now he was back in his cold, naked body, and starting to shiver. His hand flew to his neck, feeling torn flesh at where his pulse was, and feeling it knit together under the pads of his fingers— super-speed healing—until there was nothing left but flesh no warmer than room temperature.

“I’m in a morgue,” he said.

***

Ray was sticky. 

It wasn’t a good sticky, either, if there even was such a thing. It was movie theater carpet sticky, and whatever he was lying facedown on was cold and hard. He wrenched his eyes open, and for a moment all he could see was red. 

He lifted his pounding head, noting with distaste how he had to peel his face from the floor. He raised his hands to scratch at his face, finding something gummy stuck to it, making his skin crawl. It was hard to scrub off, unpleasant under the fingernails, and… oh. It was blood.

Ray raised a trembling hand to his neck. 

He fought down a gag as he felt the open mouth of the cut. Under his probing fingertips, he felt the raw edges of the wound draw themselves back together and close, as if the gash was healing on fast-forward. 

So it was real. He didn't want it to be, but he was coated in his own blood and not sure how or why he was alive. Which meant the demon inside Frank had really cut his throat. Which meant…

Ray let out an embarrassing squawk when he felt a cool, clammy hand close around his wrist. He twisted, and in a moment of sheer crazy, thought it was a zombie trying to hold his hand. A second later he realized it was Gerard. 

A whole half of his face was caked in blood that flaked where it was dry. It gummed his eye almost shut and stuck his hair down flat to the side of his head. And he was looking at Ray like he was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Ray only had a split second to hold up his arms before Gerard threw himself from the floor and wrapped him in a bone-crushing hug. He said, "Toro, Toro," over and over, the frigid point of his nose digging into the flesh between Ray's neck and shoulder.

He said "Gerard, what-" even though he was hugging him back just as tightly, with a hand clawed into the filthy, bloody hair at the base of Gerard’s neck. He wasn’t as warm as a person should be, like he’d spent a long time in a freezer. He was the temperature of a corpse, and the warmest thing about him was his breath.

“You were dead,” Gerard said, and pulled back, eyes searching Ray’s face. The red light made them shine green, like old pennies, the first tenacious blooms of spring.

Ray didn’t really know what to say. Gerard’s fingers dug into his forearms hard enough to bruise. His hands were bloody, too. He’d missed something. “I’m alive now,” he said, trying to be reassuring, and Gerard made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, his eyes crinkling at the corners. Ray tried again. “Gerard,” he said. “What happened?”

Gerard scratched at the blood on his face. “Frank… He-” Gerard waved a hand, shoved it nervously through his hair.

“Killed me,” Ray finished. Gerard gave a jerky nod. Ray would have hugged him again, but they were both covered in blood and warehouse floor grime. He glanced at the blood in a gooey pool on the floor; it looked like more than would come from just one person. And Gerard’s neck was coated in red. “He got you, too.”

“I think so,” Gerard said, his hands going to his neck. “I don’t know. I remember going… somewhere else. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “I think I did, too.” It was the strangest feeling. Like after the demon inside Frank had slashed out with his scalpel, he’d sent Ray careening out of his body, somewhere far away, only to be yanked back into his head a short time later. Stuck to the floor with his own blood, at his own murder scene. The blood wasn’t fully dry yet, so it couldn’t have been that long. Maybe he was in denial, because he thought he should be having a little bit of a crisis at rising from the grave. Probably good that he wasn’t. He needed a clear head.

Gerard peeled his jeans from the floor with a grimace. “We were dead,” he said, cautiously. Like if he said it too surely his soul would fly back out of his body again. He got his feet under him and stood up. He swayed, and his spine cracked like pop rocks, but he was on his feet. He reached a hand out to Ray to help him up. It wasn’t graceful, but he managed to stand up. The neck of his shirt stuck uncomfortably to his skin. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted a shower more.

“I think so,” Ray said. But he knew so. They’d been dead, bled out. He just had no idea how he was alive again. In this warehouse with the dim red emergency lighting. 

“Wait,” Gerard said, he’d grabbed Ray’s arm again, his face bloody and hideous and alight with hope. “If we’re alive, is Mikey?”

Hope bloomed in Ray’s chest, human warmth so unlike the chill of death that clung to Gerard’s skin. If both of them were alive, it stood to reason that Mikey would be alive, too. Even though he hated it, Ray forced himself to be pragmatic. “But how?” he said. “How are we back? And where’s Frank?”

“I don’t know,” Gerard said. At the mention of Frank, he deflated a little. He looked around as if Frank was about to step out from behind a shelving unit. Ray could see the wheels turning in his head, and he and Gerard came to the same conclusion at the same time. Gerard’s eyes went wide and looked a shocking green in the red light. 

“He didn’t,” Gerard said. 

“He _wouldn’t_ ,” Ray said. Then he thought about it. He thought about how desperate Frank looked when he told them to run back at Inkwell creek. How hard he’d been fighting. His “give ‘em hell” attitude that sometimes doubled as a deathwish.

“Fuck, he totally would," he said. "He would totally fucking find a necromancer.”

“Shit!” Gerard said. He looked nervously back at the pool of gore, then back to Ray, then down at his own hands, like necromancy would give him the black spot on his palm like a pirate or something. “Where do you think he went?"

"Hell if I know,” Ray said. They needed to get out of this warehouse. Ray didn’t want to find out what would happen if someone came back while he and Gerard were still there.

“He would have stayed if he was-” Gerard flailed a hand. “You know, _Frank_. The demon probably took him somewhere.”

“Somewhere,” Ray echoed. Gerard scowled.

“I don’t know, cut me some slack,” he said. “I just came back from the dead, dude.”

“Here, let’s go,” Ray said. He grabbed Gerard by the sleeve of his jacket, peering through the red gloom for an exit sign. He didn’t remember the way to the service door they’d come through, but he figured he could find it. He picked a direction, made sure Gerard was trailing behind him, and went. He didn’t think about what would happen when someone noticed the blood. He pitied the poor bastard that did, but figured there wasn’t much he could do about it aside from picking up a mop. He figured Gerard's maybe-dead brother was higher on the priority list.

Ray led the way half-blind through the towers of storage, peering for an exit. He kept glancing back or listening for Gerard's shuffling footsteps in irrational fear that he'd disappear, or drop dead again. He didn't. He kept close and helped find the exit. Ray was about ready to bash the crash bar and stumble out into the sunlight when Gerard stopped him.

"We're covered in blood, dude," he said.

Like Ray could forget. They couldn't do much for their faces without soap and water, but maybe they could do something about their clothes so they'd look less like zombies in public. "Turn your jacket inside-out," he said, stripping his own off. It stuck to his wrists, but from what he could see the lining was barely bloody. He inverted the sleeves and put it back on, watching Gerard do the same. Gerard scratched his fingers through his hair, trying to loosen up where blood stuck it to his scalp.

"Look okay?" he asked Ray.

A smile tugged at the corners of Ray's mouth. Gerard looked insane, with tufts of his black hair sticking up everywhere that was unflattering. "No," he said.

Gerard almost smiled, too. "Son of a bitch," he said. “We’ll just have to get to the van fast.”

“Right,” Ray said. He opened the door, expecting daylight to seep over them like a broken egg yolk. Instead, the moon shone high overhead. Bright, but disjointed in the way that shifted everything a quarter-inch to the left and made you watch your step. As far as Ray could tell, the rest of the lot outside was deserted. He breathed. The chill of the air let him know he was alive, that he was here with his best friend and things could be okay. A fine tremor ran through his hands, and he shoved them in his pockets.

“This way,” Gerard said. He took the lead this time, letting the door slam shut behind him. He and Ray turned around the corner of the building, and the brittle grass of the otherwise empty lot swayed in greeting. 

"Ray," Gerard said. "Where's the van?"

Ray looked out onto the cul-de-sac where they'd parked the van, and found it deserted. Then he blinked and looked again as if this was D&D, and he could roll a perception check and the van would be there all along. It didn't work. Obviously. The van had vacated the fucking premises, which meant they were stranded unless they wanted to hotwire something. Ray wasn’t ecstatic about the idea. Not to mention he had no idea how to hotwire a car.

“Fucking hell,” Gerard said. Ray followed him as he crossed the grass. They came to the curb, and the van didn’t spontaneously reappear as soon as they set foot on the asphalt. Ray had half a mind to sit on the curb but felt too wired to do anything but shuffle his feet in a Gerard-like gesture. The feeling of being lost crept up on him again. Like the slow seep of old blood. This time he was ready for it, though, and squashed the feeling before it could overwhelm him. He replaced it with thoughts of Mikey and persistent hope. They would find him, alive, wherever he was. Frank would be fine, too. His and Gerard’s combined will could probably alter the course of fate itself if they tried hard enough. 

But first, they needed a ride. New clothes and a shower, too. All of their shirts were in the van, which was MIA. Ray just hoped that Frank was the one who’d taken it and that he hadn’t driven it off a bridge or something. He didn’t know if he could live with himself if some random Jersey fuck had their guitars and gig money.

“Should we find a car to hotwire?” Gerard asked, only half-joking. 

“Do you know how to hotwire a car?” Ray said. He’d seen it in movies, but he and Gerard weren’t exactly protagonists to a shitty spy flick. 

“Yeah, sure, I do it every day,” Gerard said. He raised his thumb halfway to his mouth, almost biting the nail before he thought better of it and picked at the neck of his shirt instead. Gerard could be a gross dude, and it was a relief to know there were limits to his nail-biting proclivities. Ray blew a breath out the side of his mouth. The wind was cold, and the street quiet.

“Any chance of a vision?” Ray asked. 

“I’m not the Oracle of Delphi, Toro,” Gerard said, with half a grin. Ray didn’t know what to do with his hands. Humming with the need to do something and having no idea what the hell to do. 

The sound of a car horn made him jump about three feet in the air. Gerard squawked and jumped back from the curb, and Ray couldn’t believe his eyes when a van came barreling down the road, headlights blinding bright. The driver laid on the horn, and Ray had that strange, crossing-the-street fear that it was going to barrel straight into Gerard and him and squish them flat. He sidestepped closer to Gerard and hoped it was just some punk kid out for a drive. 

Gerard grabbed him. “Ray,” he said, then he was running out into the street. Ray almost tripped over his own feet when Gerard yanked him along.

“Gerard, what-?” he said, but then he got a good look at the van. The van. The van. With about three thousand bumper stickers and the dented bumper and _My Chemical Romance_ stamped on in a terrible fucking paint job. Ray had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. The van braked before it could flatten Gerard. Ray ran to the driver’s side door, which flung open and spat out a haggard, hellish-looking Frank, with eyes the size of dinner plates.

The world stopped for a second as they looked at each other. 

Gerard stared. There was no pain on his face, or blood dripping from his nose, only his jaw dropped in slack awe. “It’s you,” he said. His voice broke the cold vacuum snap of space between them. 

Ray didn’t so much lean in as attack, wrapping Frank up in a hug that felt like it was stitching his flayed ribcage back together. He didn’t know what he said, something like, “Oh, my God,” something like, “Frankie.” Frank practically jumped into his arms, and Ray, versed in Frank’s attack hugs by years of experience, caught him easily. He felt like sharp angles and knobbly knees, almost like a smaller Mikey. His shirt was crusty with blood and he seemed like he was inches from shattering into a million pointy pieces. But his arms were tight around Ray’s neck, and Ray knew, in his bones, that he was all Frank. Somehow, the demon was gone.

“I’m sorry,” Frank was saying, pressing his face into the crook of Ray’s neck. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“What? Frankie, don’t be sorry.” Ray set him down and he winced, putting all his weight on one foot. He pulled away but kept his hands cupping Frank’s elbows, looking him in the face. He looked barely like himself—like a walking corpse, his eyes lamplike and huge in his skull, thrown into stark contrast by the dark circles underneath them.

Frank turned to Gerard with the air of someone expecting to get decked and knowing they deserve it. Head ducked low and hands fidgeting. Gerard looked as though he needed a reboot, frozen in a blank-brain state before he remembered how to emote again. 

Frank said, “Gee, I’m-” but that was all he could get out before Gerard swept him into a hug. He curved around Frank like a question mark to press his face into his hair. His eyebrows twisted in the way they did when he was trying to fight down a massive surge of emotion.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s all okay; don’t apologize.”

Frank shook his head and mumbled something unintelligible into Gerard’s shirt, and Gerard gripped the back of his neck something fierce. “No,” he said. “None of this was your fault, okay? I’m just glad you’re back.”

Frank pulled away a fraction and huffed out an ugly laugh. “No, you,” he said. His eyes raked over Gerard’s face, then Ray’s. He touched Ray’s hair. Ray let him. Not like Frank’s fingers could screw it up more than it already was. “Fuck, you’re real,” he said, like he couldn’t believe it. Like… well, like he and Gerard had just come back from the dead.

“Frank,” he said, carefully. “How… are we… ?”

“Back?” Frank said, and finally, Ray saw part of his old self return in the proud draw of his shoulders. There was mud on his shirt. His mouth cracked into a lopsided smile. “I brought you back.”

Gerard’s eyes went buggy. “You didn’t. Swear to God, Frankie, if you found a necromancer-”

“I didn’t find a fucking necromancer,” Frank said. “Fucking… it’s a long story. Let’s get in the van, it’s freezing out here.”

He was spry as ever, despite looking like he hadn’t slept for days, and Ray and Gerard followed him into the van, all cramming into the front seat. Ray’s knees jammed uncomfortably up against the gear shift. He hadn’t realized how cold it was until he experienced the marvel that was the van’s heating. Many things could be said about this van, but there was no disputing that the heating was spectacular. 

“Okay,” Frank said. “Uh.”

“How did you raise us without a necromancer?” Gerard blurted. 

“I went to Hell,” Frank said, as casually as he’d say “I went to the record store.”

“Hell,” Gerard echoed. 

“But the Hell gates are closed,” Ray said. Or at least he hoped they still were. 

“Yeah, they are,” Frank said. Ray was privately relieved. With everything flipped three feet to the left like this he wouldn’t have been surprised if the Hell gates decided to give up as well, to make life that much more interesting. 

“So how’d you get in?” Gerard asked, doing his best “what the absolute fuck” face. 

“Took the gap the demon went through,” Frank said. “Then I got your souls and sent them back to the surface.”

“And?” Gerard said, when Frank didn’t offer up any more details. “Frankie, you went to Hell for us and that’s all you say?”

Frank shrugged, doing his uncomfortable shoulders. “I sent you there,” he said. “All this was my fault.” He shrugged again as if it was no big deal, but the movement was jerky, and he wouldn’t meet either of their eyes. “Y’know, I’d be the worst shit ever if I didn’t try everything to get you.”

Ray didn’t compute, and then he did. “Fucking hell, you’re blaming yourself for all this?” he said. His voice rose in pitch in the way he hated when he was angry. Frank shrugged a third time, mumbled something like, “Well, yeah,” and Ray grabbed him. 

“None of this is your fault, you dumbass,” he said. Frank blinked at him. “Fucking Fate, that’s so you. Save our asses and then blame yourself for it.”

“I’m not-”

“You saved us,” Ray said.

“I didn’t-”

“You saved us.”

“Ray-”

“You fucking saved us,” he said. He wasn’t taking no for an answer. He loved Frank to death, but sometimes he was the biggest idiot Ray knew, second only to Gerard in terms of self-loathing sacrifice. Ray turned imploring eyes on Gerard, trying to say, Back me up here, through telepathy.

“Did you get Mikey, too?” Gerard asked, quiet, picking at his fingernails in his lap. 

Frank’s ire softened. “Yeah, I got all of you out,” he said. “And you guys are awake, so he probably is, too.”

Gerard smiled his lopsided smile. “You fucking saved us,” he said. Frank didn’t object. As if he could say no to that face. “But where is he?”

That… was a good question. Ray caught himself looking out the window as if Mikey was going to appear out of the shadows or something. Like a zombie. Technically they were all zombies now, minus the appetite for flesh, and he couldn’t decide if it was cool or not. 

“Me and Gerard woke up back in the warehouse,” he said. “So… Mikey probably woke up wherever his body was.”

Gerard nodded spastically. “Where would that be?” he said. He was seriously not going to have fingernails by the time they found Mikey, given how much he was picking at his hands. 

Frank slapped his hands down on the steering wheel. “The morgue!” he said. “Fucking hell, he’s in the morgue.”

“Shit,” Gerard said, realization dawning. He batted Frank’s shoulder, his hand on the wheel. “We have to get him. Frankie, go”

“To the morgue?” Ray said. “Do we even know where the morgue is?”

“In the basement of the hospital, duh,” Gerard said. 

“Oh, duh,” Ray said. “Obviously.” 

Gerard was either oblivious to the sarcasm or didn’t care. “Frank, drive,” he said. Ray tried to get his knee out of the way so Frank could shift the van out of park, and kind of managed. 

“Of course you’d know where the morgue is, you freaky fuck,” Frank said. “God, I missed you.”

“Aw,” Ray said.

“Shut up,” Frank said. For some reason, it made a smile break open on Ray’s face that he couldn’t stop. He felt like he had a place in the universe again, squished between Frank and Gerard’s shoulders, getting poked by Frank’s elbow every time he turned left. The van was almost full. Ray felt his feet on the floor and the blood in his veins and dried in his hair. Like he was a person again, rather than something swimming in formaldehyde, peering at the world through glass while floating in a sour yellow nothing. Fingers shriveled and reaching.

Gerard was wringing his hands again, and Ray flicked him on the wrist to make him stop. “We’ll get him,” he said, using his best reassuring voice. 

“I know,” Gerard said. “But what if he’s trapped in there and gets scared or something? He hates the dark.”

Ray knew that. He also knew Mikey hated closed spaces as much as he hated those giant centipedes from that one nature documentary. It made him shudder to imagine himself in Mikey’s position, probably shut away in one of those body-length drawers, surrounded by cooling corpses in blue darkness. He kept that to himself, of course. He wasn’t about to worry Gerard more. And they weren’t far. Frank would get them there in less than an hour.

Still, being trapped in a morgue had to do things to a person.

***

Mikey drummed his fingers on the metal nearest his hand, shaping the bassline to _The Trooper_ —an idle, easy tic of a song he always went back to when he had nothing else in his brain to play.

“Can Aquaman talk to frogs?” he asked the stagnant air. He’d always wondered. Gerard would probably know.

***

While Frank drove, Gerard pestered him for details. Ray normally would have been annoyed with the way Gerard was leaning over him and using him as an armrest, but now he barely cared. It felt like home, so he sat back and listened, watching the vacant road and the spill of the van’s headlights over the asphalt.

Frank told stories like ketchup. He barely said anything at first, but if you poked at him enough all the words and details came pouring out. Gerard was a pro poker by virtue of his power of never shutting up. Ray listened about Frank’s distrust, about the demon leaving him, about Viticus and the trials. How Frank didn’t take the leap of faith in the gray desert, and instead tore through reality and took the back way.

“You’re telling me you warped the fabric of reality to get Mikey’s soul,” Gerard said. He was folded all the way over Ray now, bracing himself on his elbows. One of which was on Ray’s folded knees, and the other jabbing into his stomach. If Ray wasn’t so interested in the story he would have given him a wet willie to make him move. 

“I really don’t know,” Frank said. “I just knew it wasn’t my reality, so I could… bend things.”

“Space-time,” Gerard said. 

Frank glanced at him and smiled at the slack-jawed look on his face. “You’re squishing Toro,” he said. 

Gerard absently patted Ray’s knee and didn’t move. “Fucking space-time,” he said. 

“I don’t know if it was actually space-time,” Frank said. 

“Sounds like space-time to me,” Ray said.

“Yeah, well,” Frank said, “I’m worried I fucked something up by not doing the trials. It felt like I did.”

“What does that mean?” Gerard asked.

“Felt like… Hell was trying to spit me back out, like it didn’t want me there anymore, you know? Like I was causing too much damage and it wanted me to get out before I fucked up something beyond repair.” Frank drummed anxious fingers on the steering wheel. 

“Well, we’re here,” Gerard said, gesturing to himself, alive and a spastic movement away from nailing Ray in the diaphragm. “Maybe you just outsmarted it.”

Frank gave an unconvinced “Hm.”

“Tell me the trials again,” Gerard said. He dug around in the cupholder for a Sharpie. Ray remembered he’d moved his Sharpies to the glove box, though, and reached around Gerard to get one. Gerard took the cap off with his teeth, the nib poised over his forearm to write.

“Trust, brotherhood, and sacrifice,” Frank said. Gerard wrote them on his arm, along with _Viticus_ , like an afterthought. “Heads up, we’re close.”

Ray peered out the window. They’d pulled out onto part of the street he recognized, with that office building on the corner. His leg started jogging almost of its own accord as his nerves ratcheted up. They didn’t actually discuss what they were going to do once they got to the morgue. Ray didn’t think Gerard knew. To an extent, he didn’t care. He just didn’t know if they’d even be able to get there. They couldn’t exactly go during working hours, and leave the building with one more living person than they’d come in with. Ray didn’t even know if civilians were allowed in morgues, especially to see the body of a murder victim. Maybe they’d have to organize a heist. 

“Gee,” Frank said. “You thought about how we’re going to get inside?” Mindreader. 

Gerard blinked. “Sure,” he said.

“Okay?”

“Uh,” Gerard said. “We… uh… “

Frank waited, an amused smile growing on his face every second. Gerard couldn’t come up with anything. “We’re winging it,” Frank said. 

“How hard can it be?” Gerard said. “I’ll figure something out.”

“That’s what you said when we left Toro at the gas station and we had to hitchhike to get him back,” Frank said. 

“Oh yeah!” Ray said. “And Mikey fell out of the truck.”

Frank pulled into the hospital’s visitor parking lot. It was at the base level of a two-tier parking garage that was so empty it echoed. Of course, visiting hours didn’t start until later. There wouldn’t be many people keen to be in a hospital at four o’clock in the morning, either. 

Gerard climbed out of the van, and Ray tried to reach out and stop him, but he was already jogging across the parking lot for the door. Ray and Frank stayed put and watched Gerard approach the sliding glass doors. He stood in front of them as if waiting for a butler to come hold them open. 

Frank rolled down the window and shouted, “Come back, Gee. They’re not open.” Gerard waved his hands over his head, maybe trying to scare the door into submission. He seemed to realize he looked like an idiot and shuffled back towards the van. 

“They open at six,” he said. He rocked his weight from foot to foot, scratching at the hair above his ear. “Do you think we could get in through the emergency room?”

Ray had to pretend he didn’t consider it. “No,” he said. “Get in.”

Gerard hesitated, still fidgeting, but clambered into the back seat. “What are we supposed to do, then?” he said. “Just wait?”

“If you have a better idea, I’m all ears,” Frank said. He turned off the engine and gave the keys to Ray, who put them in his pocket. Gerard flapped his hands but didn’t seem to have an answer. He looked to Ray. Ray didn’t have a damn clue, so he shrugged. He wanted to get to Mikey. Hell, he was aching for it. He just didn’t see a way to get in without either breaking the law or causing a disturbance of epic proportions. He’d rather not be in the public eye when trying to break his recently undead best friend out of the morgue. 

“I don’t like this,” Gerard said. “What if he’s scared in there?” He looked so concerned it made Ray feel guilty. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “We can try the door again?” That was really just an excuse to stand up and move around, work some of the nerves out through walking. 

“Hey,” Frank said. “You might wanna change out of your clothes.”

Gerard looked down at himself, as if forgetting that his jacket was inside-out and white Ramones shirt was now more crusty red than anything. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. But hasn’t it been a week since we’ve done laundry?”

“Anything’s better than hemorrhaging Joey,” Frank said. 

Gerard picked sadly at Joey Ramone’s stained cartoon face. “Maybe it’ll wash out,” he said. He groped around the backseat and produced his bag from a fold in reality somewhere. 

“Here, toss me something,” Ray said. Anything, he wanted to add, because seriously, anything was better than what he had going on. A moment later Gerard flung a pair of indiscriminate jeans at him, closely followed by what looked like one of his shirts. It was no different from getting ready in the van before a show. Ray had van clothes-changing down to a science. He kicked his wad of bloody clothes into a heap at his feet and stepped on them for good measure. He couldn’t do anything for his hair, but he already felt loads more human, even though the shirt smelled like a Febreeze factory, and not in a good way.

“You think I could fry the door locks?” Gerard said. “There aren’t any wards.”

“The idea is to not cause a scene,” Ray said.

Gerard reluctantly surrendered. He sat in the back in anxious silence for a second, then said, “What if he’s not even alive?”

“He is,” Frank said. He turned around, hooking his arm around the headrest to look Gerard in the face. “I dragged him out of Hell myself, alright? He’s fine.”

Gerard nodded jerkily. “Okay,” he said. His head hung, exposing the back of his neck to Frank. Frank reached around the seat to give him an awkward one-armed hug.

Ray was relieved to see how he looked at Frank with so much implicit trust. The time of edgy posture and secretive words like back at the motel was gone. Ray had a clean conscience about the whole thing; he’d never really believed Frank could kill Mikey. He knew it was different for Gerard. There had been a small part of him that honestly believed what Fate told him. A part that, if Ray knew anything about him, had probably ripped open into a black hole of guilt upon realizing that Frank had never stopped having their backs. 

Frank rested his chin on the seat and closed his eyes. He looked beat, Ray thought. “Frankie, when was the last time you slept?”

Frank said, “Hm,” and had to think about it for longer than he should have. “I’m… not sure,” he said. He untwisted himself and looked out the windshield, really thinking about it. “Two days ago?”

“Christ,” Gerard said. Frank hummed in acknowledgment. Now that Ray knew he was pushing forty-eight hours awake, his eyes seemed to sink in his head. 

“I should probably take a nap,” Frank said, gaze glassy. He turned to Ray. “Wake me up at six,” he said. “Don’t try to be caring and shit and let me sleep.”

Ray did the scouts’ honor sign. He was the most trustworthy alarm clock out of the four of them. Gerard, on the other hand, was a serial perpetrator of being a terrible wake-up caller. If you rode in the van you learned pretty quick that he had no sense of time. 

Frank tucked his feet up on the seat, curling up in a ball with his bent wrist tucked under his chin. He was out like a light almost instantly, folded away. After a minute, though, he twisted uncomfortably and slumped toward Ray like the heat-seeking missile he was. Ray sighed and dropped an arm around him. He’d accepted his fate of being a pillow long ago. _It’s not your fault you’re so goddamn comfy_ , Frank always said.

Ray turned and rested his chin on the seat behind him, careful not to jostle Frank. Although he probably didn’t need to. Even when he was on a normal sleep schedule you couldn’t wake him up with anything short of an atomic bomb blast. Gerard was sitting there in the back, wringing his hands again.

“Stop doing that; you’re making me nervous,” Ray said. 

“I’m allowed to be nervous,” Gerard said, but he let his hands fall limp in his lap. He looked at Frank, breathing softly at Ray’s side and dead to the world. A look of pain overcame his face.

“I doubted him,” he said. It was just eating him up inside, Ray could tell.

“Gee, it’s fine,” Ray said. “I would have if I was you.”

Gerard sighed, scratching at his dirty hair. “I just feel like shit about being mean to him.”

“Well, I’m sure he feels like shit for killing us,” Ray said. “It evens out. Or something.”

“Net shit feeling of zero,” Gerard said. He waved a hand. “Math.”

Ray snorted, and soon enough they were both laughing quietly into their hands. It was a stress-laugh, but a laugh all the same. Thankfully the conversation veered off the guilt course and into friendlier territory, like what they were going to do once they got Mikey back and got piled into a motel room. 

They decided to sleep for fourteen hours first. Then they would dig out Gerard’s DVD player and extended edition box set of Lord of the Rings and watch all the movies in one sitting. With delivery pizza. With a stuffed crust. Or thin crust for Mikey, because he was a classy fucker. Then they’d all be together, and the world was their oyster. They’d play shows again, and be on the road like they were meant to be.

“How do you think you can get in the morgue?” Ray asked. 

“I don’t know,” Gerard said. He glanced at the radio clock. “I’m only good at planning albums.”

Ray didn’t harp on him for it, because he didn’t have any good ideas either. They spent the rest of the time until six rolled around in relative silence. Frank slept so hard Ray was tempted to check if he was still breathing a few times. Then without ceremony, inside the hospital doors, a man dressed in blue and a utility belt came with a key to unlock the doors. He shuffled back down the hallway and out of sight, clipping his keyring back to his belt. 

“Toro,” Gerard said. Where he’d fallen stagnant, his nervous energy was replaced tenfold. He was practically humming with it. 

“I saw him,” Ray said. He shook Frank by the shoulder, and Frank groaned in protest. He flung an arm over Ray and tried his best to graft himself to his side.

“Frank, come on.”

“Mm, no,” Frank mumbled.

“It’s time to get Mikey,” Ray said, and it took a moment for it to sink in, but Frank sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“Okay,” he said. He stretched his arms above his head and cracked his spine. When he finally pried his eyes open he looked, if it was possible, worse than before he’d fallen asleep. “You ever heard that taking an hour nap is worse for you than just staying up?”

“Yeah?” Ray said.

“It’s true,” Frank said. He opened the van door and flopped out rather than stepped. Gerard and Ray followed. Ray felt suddenly self-conscious and too aware of his hands as they approached the sliding glass doors. He shoved them in his pockets. 

The hospital was strange. He almost expected the doors to refuse to let them in, but they parted easily. Ray had the fortune of not having to come here often, but it always seemed different every time. There was this huge windowed entrance hall with a load of fake plants and no desk in sight, and somehow you just had to figure out where to go from there. The lights were warm and it wasn’t unpleasant, but not exactly comfortable, either. Fate, he hoped they didn’t run into any people. 

Frank, who stood between Ray and Gerard, jabbed elbows out to either side of him and caught them in the sides. “You’re sneaking,” he told them. “We look suspicious.” Ray tried his best to not look shifty.

“We are suspicious,” Gerard said. His head was ducked so far forward he looked like a dubious question mark. Frank told him that and he stood up a little straighter, giving himself the impression of a ruffled bird. Although Gerard always looked a little like a ruffled bird. “Okay, yeah,” he said. “Don’t be suspicious. Got it.” Frank rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. 

Gerard took the position of the fearless leader, despite being very fearful. It was how he rolled. Ray caught him trying to peek around a corner like a secret agent and had to poke him to get him to stop. “We’re normal people,” he said. “We’re coming to visit, and that’s it.”

Gerard nodded and looked marginally less like he was trying to make off with one of the fake plants. “Sorry,” he said. They turned a corner and there was a desk labeled _Directory_ with an older woman behind it, tapping at a computer. Gerard strode forward, and Ray recognized him fitting into some version of his stage persona in the tilt of his chin and shoulders. 

“Hi,” he said. He tried to look like a charming young man and kind of pulled it off. The receptionist passed him a rehearsed smile. “We’re here to visit a friend, could you direct us to the second floor, please?” He brightened his smile by a few watts, pushing it up into the “contagious” category.

The woman smiled back and pointed. “That way and to the left, dear. There are stairs and an elevator. Do you need the room number?”

“We have it already, thank you, though,” Gerard said. 

They went in the direction they were pointed, rounding the corner. When the lady was out of earshot, Ray nudged Gerard. “Nice,” he said. Gerard preened, proud of himself for being decidedly un-suspicious. They came to an elevator and Frank pressed the button. They all waited, rocking back on their heels, for it to descend to the first floor. 

The doors parted and they filed inside. Gerard peered at the row of buttons on the wall. They went from ground to the third floor, and there was a label for the basement, although there wasn’t a button next to it, rather a disk of quartz embedded in the wall.

“Fuck,” Gerard said. Frank pushed him aside and looked for himself, his brow wrinkling as he ran the pads of his fingers over the stone. 

“Fuck,” he agreed. Because unless they had someone’s thumbprint who was authorized to be in the morgue, they couldn’t get in. You saw these things in places where keys were too cumbersome. Ray didn’t know exactly how they worked, only that authorized people had magic imprints on their thumbs that let them use the circle-things. 

“How do you pick a fucking disk lock?” Gerard said (ah, that’s what they were called), crouching in front of the offending circle. He looked to Ray.

“I can’t take the battery out of the van,” he said, before Gerard could say anything. 

“That wouldn’t even work; they tried it on _Mythbusters_ ,” Frank said. Gerard shot him a look like, _You’re not helping._

Gerard ran his fingertips over the lock again, and Ray could just see him thinking over every heist movie he’d ever seen, flipping through them in the massive movie Rolodex he kept in his brain. Corners of his mouth turned down in thought, he pressed his thumb to the disk.

There was a small pop like a knuckle cracking and Gerard’s hand flinched back. The elevator started sinking.

“Holy shit,” he said, looking at his thumb, then at the disk of quartz that now had a hairline crack running through it. “I think I fried it.”

“Gerard-ex-Machina,” Ray said, with a smile that felt like it was about to split his face in half. Of course. Of fucking course, Gerard’s foreseer blood would be volatile enough to fry a disk lock. He and Gerard shared a terrible movie nerd high-five that made Frank groan good-naturedly.

The doors cracked open, and Ray felt the temperature change first. It wasn’t like the elevator deposited them directly into the morgue, more like the end of a blue-lit hallway with big, glass-panel walls to their right. Ray was surprised by how similar the morgue looked to the ones on procedural cop TV. Same white walls, same cold feeling that settled heavy in his gut. 

“Come on,” Gerard said. He grabbed Ray and Frank by the sleeves and tugged them through the nearest glass door. “We gotta be fast.”

It was even colder inside the room, in a stale, stagnant way. There was even an autopsy table that shone dull chrome like the wall full of drawers. Full of bodies. The hair on the back of Ray’s neck stood on end.

Gerard stood in the middle of the room, slowly swiveling with his hands held out from his sides. “Mikey?” he said. His voice echoed strangely in the empty room. 

A heartbeat. Then: “Gerard?”


End file.
